The Hand That Grabbed Her Ankle
by Swagnarok
Summary: In life, Sonoko was unable to do anything to save Ran from sudden unexpected death at the hands of a serial killer. But now, out of the blue, a second chance presents itself, an opportunity for her to set things right, and to say her last goodbyes. Episodes 988-993.
1. Chapter 1

He entered the rich girl's bedroom, just to find that she wasn't there, when-

He noticed that the glass door was slid open. Sonoko stood outside, leaning against the balcony, looking out at the moonlight.

He went out and stood next to her, looking up at her head.

"Hmm? What are you doing out here?" Conan inquired. "Didn't you call me here because you wanted to talk to me about something?"

"...It feels nice, doesn't it? This breeze."

"W-Well, I'm shorter than the railing, so I wouldn't know."

Sonoko took a deep breath, and then blurted out:

"I don't buy that, not for one second. Who are you to make a decision like that for someone else, without even asking them what they think? Me personally, I don't believe that I could move past a broken heart if I didn't have the faintest clue of why it happened. I would demand the facts, surely, no matter how terrible they may be. And I know I'm not the only person who thinks like this! So who do you think you are?"

"Huh?" Conan said. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"...It doesn't ring a bell to you at all?" Sonoko asked.

"No. Should it?"

There was a pause.

"O-Oi," Conan protested, "why are you looking at me like that, Sonoko-neecha-

"You can cut the act," Sonoko said. "Man, the audacity. Bailing on all your friends like that. How long did you make Ran wait for you? I'll bet she didn't even know until a couple months ago, when you faked her death and had her shrunk."

Conan felt like there was a frog in his throat. He knew what was coming next.

"Well? Aren't you going to say anything...Shinichi?"

 **Opening**

(Shameless by CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE)

Whoo girl you're as cool as ice

Deal me another full deck o' lies

Dontcha dare break yer poker face

Empty my heart's vault at record pace

 _Baby yeeeeeah!_

(Not all that glitters is gold! A pearly white smile can mask a heart as black as coal! The line between ours and the netherworld is disturbed, resulting in a crisis of identity! Perceiving the one and only truth! With the body of a child but the mind of an adult, my name is DETECTIVE CONAN!)

And so we find ourselves at this crossroad again

Per my count, you've lied to me five times tonight

You've woven a tale that'd leave J.R.R. Tolkien speechless

A carefully constructed narrative flimsier than a house of cards

I don't know if I should let you walk away

I don't know if you're worth the trouble

But what I care enough to demand an answer to

"What did I have that you wanted for your own?"

You shameless thing, a web of deceit left in your wake

Antithetical to the driving force that binds people together

A thick veil of mist shrouds the true you that you can't let slip

In the name of all that's true, I'll deconstruct you piece by piece!

 **The Hand That Grabbed Her Ankle, Part One!**

 _Sonoko Suzuki, age 18. By any indication, a normal Japanese teenage girl. She was a straight B student at Teitan High School, located in Beika, Tokyo. She had a martial artist boyfriend, and her family was extremely wealthy. However, she generally played down her wealth when around her friends, who were all of middle or working class background. Her best friend was Ran Mouri, a girl who passed away at the tender age of 18._

 _No, that wasn't right. Ran didn't pass away. She was murdered, late at night, in her own home, by gunshot inflicted by a mysterious man. All Sonoko knew was that the man's name was Dylan Cliffberg, part of some shadowy mafia group, one that was more dangerous than any yakuza group. This singular hint about Ran's killer was provided by Shinichi Kudo, childhood friend and love interest of the deceased Ran. How he came across this information Sonoko did not know; her parents went to the police and then hired a private investigator whenever the police failed to track the man down, but all they were able to find were old records of an adolescent American national named Dylan Cliffberg who, with his brother Max, disappeared without a trace; on the day of their disappearance, a girl named Akane was found dead by the police. Forensics evidence traced the murder back to the two of them._

 _In the months following Ran's murder, the family gradually lost hope in getting justice for Ran, and after a certain point Sonoko's parents lost interest in pursuing the matter further. Sonoko felt betrayed by this attitude, and this would remain a point of contention to some extent, but for the most part it quickly fell into the backdrop of everyday life. And in the weeks following Ran's murder, Sonoko learned how to fill all that extra time that she used to spend were her best friend in a reasonably productive or gratifying way. The family was happy to receive some overdue distraction from their troubles in the wedding of their elder daughter and Sonoko's sister, Ayako._

 _At that wedding, an unexpected guest showed up: Nancy Akechi, a young girl who looked exactly like Ran. After getting over her initial shock, Sonoko became curious: how far did the comparison between those two people go? And so, she decided to test it out. She asked Nancy if she wanted to hang out sometime._

 _They did that, and Sonoko found the results promising. For her occasional guardedness, Nancy just couldn't keep a lid on how much she behaved, talked, and even sounded like Ran. She had a level of maturity more akin to a girl Sonoko's age than one Conan's, even if at times she made blatantly fake gestures to seem more like a child._

 _In short, being around Nancy felt almost the same as being around Ran. Obviously, it had to be some sort of coincidence. Maybe she was a relative of Ran's, and she served as Nancy's role model. But then she remembered Ran's parents saying Nancy wasn't related at all to their knowledge. Ultimately, Sonoko had little choice but to shrug her shoulders and dismiss it all as a freak accident of nature, a statistical anomaly of the universe._

 _And for that accident or anomaly, Sonoko did not cease to be grateful. She considered the girl to be a kind of lifeline, one that allowed her to regain a large aspect of the way things were before Ran died. A return to normalcy, the good old days. She figured Nancy probably didn't understand any of this, the reason why a teenager would invite her out to do stuff together, but what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her, right?_

 _There was one more problem, of course: when Sonoko began hanging out with an eight year old girl, it turned heads. Granted, the fact that Sonoko was a woman and not a man made the strange situation near infinitesimally more acceptable for the general public and for the people Sonoko and Nancy knew. But only one other girl seemed entirely onboard with the situation: Masumi. The flat-chested tomboy would often join them in their outings, and when the three of them were together, it was even more like old times._

 _Little did Sonoko know that her whole world was about to be flipped upside down._

 **Scene Transition**

 _As Conan and Nancy walked in the door:_

 _"Finally!" Sonoko said._

 _"Sorry," Nancy said. "It took us longer than we thought getting back from that case. And to wrap it up too."_

 _"You both know it starts in fifteen minutes, right?" Sonoko said._

 _"Yeah, so?" Conan said. "It's not like you have to buy a ticket before it starts. We can just show up at any time, free of charge. Worse case, we'll miss a few songs."_

 _Sonoko sighed. "Man, I was hoping we could get there early so we could watch the hands play from up close. But there's no chance of that now."_

 _"This event is gonna be packed from what I hear," Conan said. "If you wanted to be up in the front I doubt twenty minutes would've made much of a difference anyway._ Your Atomic Romance _is gonna be there, right?"_

 _"Yeah. This is gonna be their third public concert total since the band got back together last year," Nancy said enthusiastically. "It's really surprising to me that we in Japan are getting this chance to see them perform live."_

 _"Are we gonna talk or are we gonna go?" Sonoko pressed. "Get ready as fast as you can so we can leave! The car's waiting, so chop chop!"_

 **Scene Transition**

Now I know

That I can't make you stay

But where's your kidney

But where's your kidney

But where's your

And I know

 _The car driven by the Suzuki family's chauffeur pulled into the parking space. Of course, her parents would pay the bill on the parking meter._

 _"Dang it!" Sonoko said. "You hear that? They already started!"_

 _The only available parking space was about two blocks from the open air gathering at Tokyo Bay, the site of the "Down By the Bay Music Festival", an annual public event that drew in more than 4,000 people the year prior._

 _They got out of the car and and began dashing across the street._

 _They entered the thick mass of people and made their way towards the stage._

 _"Ladies and gentlemen, please give them a round of applause for their exceptional performance and now let's welcome_ AKBAR _."_

 _"Dang it, we missed the big attraction," Sonoko said._

 _"It's fine," Nancy said. "They said on their website they'd be doing three songs tonight. Given that it should've just started about five minutes ago, they couldn't have had time to run through all of them already. They'll be back on stage later."_

 _A group of about twenty girls dressed in strange, skimpy fruit-themed costumes took the stage. And then the teen idol group began singing something about fruit._

 _Three and a half minutes later..._

 _"AKBAR is proudly sponsored by Fruit of the Loom, underwear made from ultra-comfortable fabrics for the horny middle-aged men who make up nearly 50℅ of AKBAR'S fan base."_

 _"I'm gonna go buy me a light snack or something," Conan said. "Looks like there's a lot of_ yatai _stalls around here."_

(Author's Note: Yatai is a traditional Japanese cart which carries and sells foods such as ramen, tempura, and beer.)

 _"Wait, didn't you just hear the guy?" Sonoko said. "_ B's _is next!"_

 _"Yeah, whatever, I'm just gonna get something and come back."_

 _"I'm coming with you," Nancy said._

 _Sonoko sighed. "Alright. If you see anybody selling churros, buy me one and I'll pay you back later."_

 _As they were leaving:_

"Don't wanna lie, don't wanna lie, ikiteru to, kanjite ikai...!"

 _"I could've sworn I know that song from somewhere," Nancy said._

 _"Lalala, I can't hear anything, and neither can you!" Conan said, covering his ears._

 **Scene Transition**

 _"Hmm...okay, one medium popcorn, please," Conan said._

 _The man handed the bag to Conan and Nancy with a grunt._

 _"Thank you," Conan said, handing him the yen._

 _The man just grunted again._

 _"You know, you're not being very polite to your customers," Nancy said._

 _"Look, kid, I'm a Korean migrant worker who makes 200 yen an hour, in one of the world's most expensive cities. I don't give a flip."_

 _And with that, Conan and Nancy made their way back to where Sonoko was. To their surprise-_

 _"_ _Jodie_ _-_ _sensei_ _?!" Conan said._

 _"Oh, Conan-kun! Nancy-chan!" the American woman who spoke better Japanese than she did English, even though she recently served as an English teacher, said. "I came here because I wanted the chance to attend a Japanese rock concert. It has always been a dream of mine."_

 _"What's your favorite band?" Sonoko said._

 _"Oh this one for sure," Jodie said. "_ They have gureito sekusu appiru."

 _Alright, that one was a little jarring, even for a Japanese voice actor, Conan thought with a deadpan look._

 _"But you know," Nancy said to Conan, "that was a little weird. All the stalls-_

 _"Yeah. They all had the same signature on the side of the cart. And it looked like there was a great deal of uniformity in what they were selling. I'm guessing they all work for one person or company."_

 _"That sucks," Nancy said. "Normally, you can expect each vendor to have his own unique recipe, and menu. But even yatai carts are being commercialized now."_

 _"That's just the way progress works," Conan said. "Economy of scale dictates that when you have so many carts working for one business entity, that drives their prices down. I mean, just think about how crazy cheap that popcorn was just now. Furthermore, such a company can afford to spend the money making sure that all their products are as appealing to the masses as possible. You just can't get that with a mom and pops joint."_

 _"I totally disagree with that! Half the time fast food tastes like processed glop. You don't have to worry as much about that with local businesses. They put their hearts into their cooking."_

 _"Cooking is a science. It has nothing to do with 'heart'. If it did, would your mom be so terrible at it?"_

 _He does have a point, Nancy thought sheepishly._

 **Scene Transition**

 _It was now 8:10. The concert had just come to an end, after lasting two hours._

 _"Oh man, that end song," Nancy said. "I know everything they've made, so that must've been a new one. Definitely worth coming, just for that."_

 _"I couldn't make out what they were saying," Jodie said._

 _"Huuh? But weren't they speaking English?" Sonoko said._

 _Yup, sounds about right, Conan thought with a deadpan look._

 _"AAAAAAAHHHHHH!"_

 _Conan, Nancy, and Jodie instinctively ran towards the direction of the scream._

 _Underneath a table beneath a dimly lit tarp, somebody had just discovered a body._

 _Within a few minutes time, the body was identified:_

 _It was Masashige Konno, age 48, the owner of the numerous yatai carts that'd been present at this event._

 **Ending**

(Secret of my Heart by Mai Kuraki)

 _Donna kotoba ni kaete_

 _Kimi ni tsutaerareru darou_

 _Arekara ikutsumo no kisetsu ga_

 _Toorisugita keredo_

 _Itsumo soba de waratteru_

 _Watashi nimo ienai koto ga mada hitotsu dake aru_

 _SECRET OF MY HEART_

 _Utagattemo nai ne_

 _Itsu datte sukoshi no mirai ga areba_

 _Shinjitsu wa te ni irerareru hazu_

 _I CANNOT SAY mou sukoshi dake_

 _I'M WAITING FOR A CHANCE_

 **Next Conan's Hint: Bar Stool**


	2. Chapter 2

_It was now 8:10. The concert had just come to an end, after lasting two hours._

 _"Oh man, that end song," Nancy said. "I know everything they've made, so that must've been a new one. Definitely worth coming, just for that."_

 _"I couldn't make out what they were saying," Jodie said._

 _"Huuh? But weren't they speaking English?" Sonoko said._

 _Yup, sounds about right, Conan thought with a deadpan look._

 _"AAAAAAAHHHHHH!"_

 _Conan, Nancy, and Jodie instinctively ran towards the direction of the scream._

 _Underneath a table beneath a dimly lit tarp, somebody had just discovered a body._

 _Within a few minutes time, the body was identified:_

 _It was Masashige Konno, age 48, the owner of the numerous yatai carts that'd been present at this event._

 **Opening**

(Shameless by CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE)

Whoo girl you're as cool as ice

Deal me another full deck o' lies

Dontcha dare break yer poker face

Empty my heart's vault at record pace

 _Baby yeeeeeah!_

(Not all that glitters is gold! A pearly white smile can mask a heart as black as coal! The line between ours and the netherworld is disturbed, resulting in a crisis of identity! Perceiving the one and only truth! With the body of a child but the mind of an adult, my name is DETECTIVE CONAN!)

And so we find ourselves at this crossroad again

Per my count, you've lied to me five times tonight

You've woven a tale that'd leave J.R.R. Tolkien speechless

A carefully constructed narrative flimsier than a house of cards

I don't know if I should let you walk away

I don't know if you're worth the trouble

But what I care enough to demand an answer to

"What did I have that you wanted for your own?"

You shameless thing, a web of deceit left in your wake

Antithetical to the driving force that binds people together

A thick veil of mist shrouds the true you that you can't let slip

In the name of all that's true, I'll deconstruct you piece by piece!

 **The Hand That Grabbed Her Ankle, Part Two!**

The hustle and bustle all around her was enough to rouse her back to consciousness.

She lifted her head: she had been resting it on a counter.

She was sitting on a bar stool. She was in some kind of sit-down restaurant. She turned her head: it was one of those really small restaurants inside of a mall...

"Or is this...an airport?" Ran wondered out loud.

"Airport. I haven't seen that one in a while. But I guess everybody sees it differently. You know, one would think airport would be more common. It's a fitting metaphor to explain all this."

Behind the counter was a woman in a cute outfit with an apron.

In fact, it wasn't really a woman. It looked more like a teenage girl, with pinkish/reddish slightly curly hair.

"...Aren't you a little young to be working the counter here?" Ran asked. "Hmm, come to think of it, where is here? I don't recognize this place."

"Fair enough. None of what you see is real. Well, except for me, and yourself, of course. You're dead."

"Excuse me?"

"You, Ran Mouri, are dead. According to your file...hmm, let's see...it says here you were shot in the head. In your own home, no less. While you and your father were still awake and while all the lights in the house were still on. Wow. Your killer had guts."

That was quite the bombshell for Ran. She was speechless.

"Yup, pretty big stinking deal, right? Take a minute or two to process what you just heard, or maybe take an hour, or however long you like. Doesn't matter. Time doesn't pass the same way here."

"S-so by here you mean-

"The afterlife."

A male voice on the loudspeaker in the background was saying something mostly unintelligible.

"...No," Ran said. "I-I can't be dead. There's Conan-kun to look after, and Sonoko and Sera-san, and my mom and dad...and Shinichi. I just told him how I really felt, like two weeks ago. And before that, he told me how he felt. We-we love each other! Things were finally moving forward, after so long! So no, this can't be happening! Not now! We haven't had a chance to be together...

The girl handed her a tissue. Ran wiped her eyes, though that proved a somewhat difficult task, seeing as how they just kept coming.

"If-if I'm dead, then why am I crying?" she asked with a nervous laugh.

"Well, you're still you, after all. You haven't passed on yet."

"Passed on?"

The girl handed her a latte. "Here. This one's on the house."

Ran took a sip. "Mmm, this is good."

"Isn't it? Not too shabby for a girl who's been dead for fifty years."

Ran coughed up what she had put into her mouth. She wiped it up on her napkin. " _G-gomenasai_. Fifty years? You've been dead that long?"

"Well, last I checked it's 2020 now, so I guess it's been a little longer than that, but you get the point. My name's Bonnie, by the way. Bonnie Cartwright. Any questions?"

"Um, yeah, you said that I 'haven't passed on' yet. What does that mean? You and I seem to be in the same state. Does that mean you haven't passed on either?"

"That's right, I stayed behind because I died without paying back my debts. So here I am."

"Your debts?" Ran repeated.

"It's nothing," Bonnie said dismissively. "Bottom line is: I'm here to make sure that you're able to pass on."

"And what happens when I do that?"

"That's simple: you shed the identity of Ran Mouri and be reborn as someone else. I'm here to help you reincarnate."

 **Scene Transition**

 _To the great displeasure and inconvenience of the crowds, when the police arrived the first thing they did was section off the area and prevent anyone from leaving. Then they began confiscating people's phones and cameras._

 _"Megure-keibu," Takagi said, "we've managed to identify three probable suspects."_

 _Chiba escorted the three suspects to where Megure was. They were:_

 _Shinpei Goto, age 36_

 _Ryoko Uesumi, age 35_

 _Tetsuo Funaki, age 28_

 _"And how do you know it's one of them?" Megure asked._

 _"Well, I figured I best let them explain it," Takagi said._

 _"The three of us knew the deceased Konno-san," Shinpei said. "Up until about five years ago, the yatai industry in Tokyo consisted of a fair number of independent cart owners. The three of us, and many others, were able to make a decent living in this line of work. But that man, he sought to dominate the market. He used blackmail, intimidation, and bribed corrupt health inspectors to force all his competition out of business. The three of us are all that's left."_

 _"But to be honest, we're just barely hanging on," Ryoko said. "We show up at public events and gathering like this, and that's how we've managed to eke out a profit up until this point. Even so, the three of us have had to get part-time jobs to make ends meet."_

 _"But, you know, having to get part-time jobs goes against the spirit of the traveling food cart owner!" Tetsuo said. "I chose to do this and to pour my heart into my cooking instead of going to college or being a salaryman, because that's what my dad and his dad before him did. But Konno just came out of nowhere. He's an abomination to all that we stand for."_

 _"So...the three of you ran the only yatai stalls at this event not owned by Konno-san?" Megure asked._

 _They nodded._

 _"He knew that we'd be here," Ryoko said. "So he ordered all the other carts to sell their food for dirt cheap, even at a slight loss."_

 _"As a result, none of us hardly had any customers at all," Shinpei said._

 _From a few feet away Conan, Nancy, Sonoko, and Jodie were listening in._

 _"Economy of scale my left foot," Nancy said to Conan. "That food was cheap so to put small business owners out of work. How do you feel knowing that you helped the man?"_

 _Way to rub it in my face, Conan thought._

 _"Inspector!" an officer called out, running towards them._

 _"Yes?"_

 _"The parking meter, along with the chauffeur's testimony, confirms that the victim's car arrived on scene about two blocks from the park at 7:10 on the dot. He immediately got out of the vehicle and walked towards the festival."_

 _"Good work," Megure said. He turned to the three suspects. "Can you account for your whereabouts during this evening?"_

 _"Well, we all arrived as a group at around 6:30," Shinpei said. "We've been here waiting for customers ever since, until the concert ended and the murder happened. Oh, yeah, and Konno-san actually did pay my stall a visit around 7:30."_

 _"Huuh?" Megure said. "And what happened then?"_

 _"Mainly he just came to gloat," Shinpei said. "He's done it in the past, especially when it looks like we don't have any customers. He came in and ordered a ramen."_

 _"And how long did this exchange happen?" Takagi asked._

 _Shinpei shrugged. "About two or three minutes. Then he left."_

 _"Um, actually, Konno visited me too," Tetsuo said. "It was at 7:40. Or was it 7:39? Anyway, he ordered tempura."_

 _"He visited me as well," Ryoko said. "At 7:20."_

 _"And, uh, what did he order?" Takagi asked._

 _"Ramen," Ryoko said._

 _"Hold on," Megure said. "He ordered ramen at your stall, then a few minutes later went over to his stall and ordered ramen there too?"_

 _"He didn't actually eat it," Ryoko said, a tinge of bitterness in her voice. "Well, he had one taste of it, said it was awful, 'accidentally' spilled the bowl, blamed me for it, and then walked out without paying. Ooh, that man was infuriating!"_

 _"As for the two of you, how long did he stay at your establishments?" Megure asked._

 _"Same as with Shinpei," Tetsuo said. "About two or three minutes."_

 _"Same here," Ryoko said._

 _"And when Konno-san visited each of your stalls, were there any witnesses to such?" Megure asked._

 _"I didn't have any customers during the time that he was there, no," Shinpei said._

 _"Same here," Ryoko said._

 _"And here," Tetsuo said._

 _"INSPECTOR!" Chiba said, running. "I just got word from the coroner. Large amounts of alcohol and a highly toxic industrial insecticide were found in his bloodstream."_

 _"Did he bring-_

 _"Way ahead of you, sir," Chiba said. "We asked the chauffeur and he said Konno-san hadn't brought any kind of bottle or container with him when he left the car. And the amount of blood alcohol is too high to have come from a small flask he could've fit in his pocket."_

 _"Furthermore, no such flask or bottle was found on or near the body, sir," Takagi said._

 _Megure turned again to the three suspects. "Did you serve beer at your stalls this evening?"_

 _"Yes, we all did," Shinpei said._

 _Nancy turned to Conan. "When you and Jodie-sensei examined the body, you said you could smell alcohol from his mouth, right?"_

 _"Yeah," Conan said._

 _The other stalls owned by Konno-san would've all been busy, Conan thought, meaning that there would've been witnesses. And they would not have expected for Konno-san to specifically visit them. Insecticide is the kind of thing that you have to obtain ahead of time. Therefore, this was most likely a premeditated murder...and one of these three people is the culprit!_

 _"But...one thing doesn't add up," Conan said._

 _"Huh?" Sonoko said. "What doesn't?"_

 _"Pallor Mortis," Jodie said. "The paleness of a corpse. It normally sets in somewhere from 15 to 25 minutes after death. If Konno-san had left the last guy's stall by 7:45, and died a few short minutes afterwards, or even worse died of poisoning at his stall before that much time had passed, then there's no way we wouldn't have been able to observe Pallor Mortis on the body."_

 _"One of them is lying, for sure," Conan said._

 **Scene Transition**

 _Conan and Nancy decided to take a walk around the crime scene. There were sporadic clusters of unhappy, detained concert goers that Conan and Nancy simply tried to maneuver around._

 _"What are we doing?" Nancy asked._

 _"I don't see any reason why the victim would lie down underneath a table. I suspect the culprit put him there. Dragged him, more like it. To do so..."_

 _"Oh. You wanna know how far away each of the stalls is from where the body was found?"_

 _"Yeah."_

 _They passed by the stall owned by Tetsuo._

 _Conan got up on a bar stool and began sniffing the counter._

 _"Should I even ask?"_

 _"I'll explain later."_ _Conan got down._

 _They then arrived at the next one, Ryoko's._

 _"Hmm, that's strange," Conan said. "Why's that bar stool way over here?"_

 _Conan picked a bar stool closer to the counter and did the same thing._

 _"What are you looking for?"_

 _"Yup, this one's been sprayed down recently," Conan said. "Just like she said."_

 _He got down._

 _"...Man, it's so hot here," Nancy said. "And to think it's dark out."_

 _"Well, it's still humid from when it rained earlier...wait. When was that? How long did it rain?"_

 _"From 7:08 to about 7:30."_

 _"Huh? How can you be so sure of when it started?" Conan asked._

 _"That second song by Idist started at 7:08, and then it started sprinkling. A few minutes later it became full-blown rain. It's still kind of muddy too...we should've changed shoes earlier before coming. You know, speaking of earlier today..."_

 _"Yeah. Ayumi-chan didn't show up to school. That's not like her at all."_

 _They arrived at the last of the three stalls, Tetsuo's._

 _He got up on a barstool and sniffed a counter for the third time today._

 _"What do you think?"_

 _"This counter's also been cleaned recentl...Hold on, I think I got it."_

 _"Huh?"_

 _"I think I just figured out what happened."_

 _"So you're gonna tranquilize Sonoko and wrap this up?"_

 _"Not yet. I need to do some more searching around first. I don't have hard evidence yet. But it shouldn't be too long."_

 **Scene Transition**

"I'm here to help you reincarnate."

Ran blinked in surprise. "Reincarnate?"

"What? You're Japanese, aren't you? So surely you know what that is."

"Yes, but...to be honest, I figured when I died I'd either stay dead or go to heaven."

"Well, sorry to disappoint you," Bonnie said.

"I can't reincarnate," Ran said. "If that means I'll forget everything and everyone in my life."

Bonnie shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you then. It's either that or you're trapped here in the netherworld."

Ran was silent.

"Hey, listen," Bonnie said. "It's perfectly natural for people to not wanna let go. You can have as much time as you want to think about it, but in the end there's only one valid option."

"Can I...can I at least have one last chance to say goodbye?"

"Sure. You can conjure up the image of your family and friends and say what you need to."

"No, I mean-

"You mean actual communication with your loved ones back on earth? No. That's expressly forbidden. Though, you should've known the answer to that one before you asked. If the dead were allowed to communicate with the living, wouldn't you hear about it, and frequently? Wouldn't some of your own relatives have contacted you in that manner, were it allowed?"

"If nothing else, then, at least some kind of sign from me, to let them know I'm alright?"

"No. There is a vast chasm between our two worlds. The living can cross without immediate consequence, but if the dead should cross over to the world of the living, they must pay the price: they must offer up a tribute to _Kami-sama_. The required tribute is the entire essence of who you were before. That's the only way that you can make the return trip back to earth. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. You're not the first person to ask me that, you're not the first person I've had to say no to, and I'm sure that you won't be the last."

No, Ran thought, beginning to despair. No, it can't be like this. There has to be a way. There has to be...

"Whoa, whoa, don't start crying again," Bonnie said. "Do that and you'll have me crying too. Look, I'm not supposed to say this, but...I know a loophole, of sorts."

 **Scene Transition**

 _"Inspector," Takagi said, "our search of the cameras and phones have yet to reveal anything that would shed light on the case."_

 _"Furthermore," Chiba said, "the crowds are growing restless. One prominent Tokyoite blogger has accused the police of favouritism and corruption by going to such unusual lengths to investigate the death of a rich man."_

 _Alright, Conan thought, running back to where the police were gathered. I've gathered all the evidence I need. Time to bring this one home._

 _Megure sighed. "Alright, it would seem we have little choice but to let everyone go-_

 _Sonoko began tottling like a drunken person, and then fell over as though in a stupor. She leaned against one of the legs of a tent._

 _"Inspector, I know what happened here," Sonoko/Conan declared._

 _"Oh?" Megure said. "Wait, you're doing that Sleeping Kogoro thing, aren't you?"_

 _From a few feet away, Nancy and Jodie were grinning._

 _"This shouldn't take long," Sonoko/Conan said. "First of all, I'd like to call on two witnesses. If you'd please."_

 _Two teenage girls came into view. They were both wearing skirts that were slightly less than knee-length._

 _"At one time did you two visit that woman's stall?" Sonoko/Conan asked._

 _"Um, it was around 7:50," one of them said._

 _"I see. And was anyone else there, besides the two of you and the woman behind the counter?" Sonoko/Conan asked._

 _"No," the other girl said._

 _"And how long did you stay there?"_

 _"It couldn't have been more than five minutes," one of the said._

 _"Thank you both. Ryoko-san, after these two girls left, did you have any more customers?"_

 _"What's this all about?!" Ryoko demanded. "You think I did it?"_

 _"Answer the question, if you'd please."_

 _Ryoko sighed. "No. I didn't have any other customers after them. What's this about?"_

 _"It's funny you'd say that," Sonoko/Conan said. "As you see, these two girls are both of about the same height and build. They're both wearing skirts. That would effectively disbar them from putting their legs up on the counter, for reasons pertaining to basic modesty. Furthermore, there's only two bar stools lining your establishment's counter. And yet, one of the stools is scooted ridiculously far back."_

 _"So?" Ryoko said impatiently._

 _"You said Konno-san was a jerk. I think that part's true, but you left out one detail: that full-grown man sat way back and put his legs up on the table, so as to signal his dominance over you."_

 _"He did the same thing to me," Tetsuo said._

 _"That raises the question, of course: who eats ramen like that? The answer: nobody. A bowl of ramen, filled with liquid, is much too volatile and spill-prone for somebody to do that, especially when we consider he was wearing a reasonably expensive suit. A bottle of beer, on the other hand, is less likely to spill. That, of course, is the real reason that you wiped the counter down: you didn't want them to know that it had someone's muddy prints on it. After all, you dragged his body over the counter by the front. Yet his corpse was found lying on its back. So why was there that mud stain on his pants around his crotch area? Of course, you missed something big: since he was leaning back in the stool when he died, it stands to reason he fell over backwards when he was poisoned. Though you were lucky enough that the glass didn't break, a fair bit of it spilled in grass. Even now, you can smell it there. I even had Conan-kun check. Furthermore, when that happened, since the ground was still muddy from the rain, traces of mud got on the edge of the stool. You remembered to stand the stool after it had been knocked over, but not to wipe it off thoroughly or to put it back closer to the counter. That was terribly sloppy of you."_

 _"Another piece of important evidence," Sonoko/Conan continued, "is the fact that, since the body fell over backwards into the mud, the back of his shirt and head are muddy. This is even though the upper part of the body was probably raised up off the ground as it was being lifted, and even though the tarp kept the ground beneath it from getting wet. All of this proves that you are the killer. You were not the first to be visited by him, as you claimed, but rather the last. And the time of this visit was closer to 8:00 than whatever you said."_

 _"Speculation!" Ryoko snapped. "All of this is mere speculation! What hard evidence do you have that it was me?!"_

 _"You said that Konno-san took one bite of ramen. If that's true, then you should be able to produce chopsticks or even a fork with his fingerprints and saliva on it. Also, you if you're innocent then you'll let our forensics lab examine the rag you used to wipe off the counter. If you're telling the truth, it should turn up ramen liquid, and not mud. Finally,_ _though the bottle he drank from did not shatter, it cracked, and some alcohol ended up leaking out into the victim's hand. This is evidenced by the fact that there were sizable amounts of liquid, probably alcohol, on the palm of his right hand, but not on the outside of it. If we manage to find a slightly cracked bottle of booze with your fingerprints on it, and if there are traces of poison in that bottle, then we'll know for sure that you're the killer. Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"_

 _"Ryoko-san, tell me it isn't true!" Tetsuo said._

 _She sighed. "About ten years ago, I was forced to flee from a horrible relationship. I even changed my name, and moved here to Tokyo. I knew I couldn't pass a background check living under a fake name. I inherited my cooking skills from my dad, who worked for a time in a kitchen, so I knew my best bet was to be self-employed as a traveling cart owner. And, this life...it's been liberating. But Konno-san, he found out about it somehow. A few days ago he blackmailed me. He said he'd tell my former partner where I lived unless I agreed to shut down my operation and work for him. I told him I'd give him my answer if he just came to my stall at the concert tonight. And so I plotted to kill him."_

 _"But wait a second," Shinpei said. "You told us you got a part-time job. How did you manage that if-_

 _"It was under-the-table work," Ryoko said. "It paid barely anything. I've actually had to resort to living in my cart. But now, I guess my life as a free woman who lives as she pleases is coming to an end."_

 **Ending**

(Secret of my Heart by Mai Kuraki)

 _Donna kotoba ni kaete_

 _Kimi ni tsutaerareru darou_

 _Arekara ikutsumo no kisetsu ga_

 _Toorisugita keredo_

 _Itsumo soba de waratteru_

 _Watashi nimo ienai koto ga mada hitotsu dake aru_

 _SECRET OF MY HEART_

 _Utagattemo nai ne_

 _Itsu datte sukoshi no mirai ga areba_

 _Shinjitsu wa te ni irerareru hazu_

 _I CANNOT SAY mou sukoshi dake_

 _I'M WAITING FOR A CHANCE_

 _A few minutes later, Sonoko woke up. The police had dispersed and everyone started going home._

 _As they were leaving the grounds:_

 _"What happened?" Sonoko asked.  
_

 _"You don't remember, Sonoko-neechan?" Conan said. "You were awesome! You solved that case all by yourself!"_

 _To be honest, all I remember is taking a nap, Sonoko thought.  
_

 _"Well, it was fun watching a Japanese rock concert," Jodie said. "Even if it did turn into a murder scene at the end. Well, I hope to see you guys again soon. Bye."_

 _"Bye," the three of them said to the former English teacher who could barely speak English._

 _"Whew, I'm beat," Nancy said to Conan. "Let's go home."_

 _She turned to Sonoko. "So, um, see you later?"_

 _"Okay," Sonoko said._

*ring*

 _Sonoko looked at the number on her phone: it did not look familiar._

 _I swear, she thought, if this is another one of those Americans who think my name is Serena..._

 _She answered. "Moshi-moshi? Who is this?"_

 _The ragged breathing on the other side unnerved her. "Hello? Is this a prank call?"_

 _"Sonoko."_

 _Sonoko's heart skipped a beat. She felt goosebumps on her skin. But she composed herself and repeated: "Who is this?"  
_

 _"Sonoko, it's me. It's so good to hear your voice again."_

 _The tone of the voice on the other end seemed to Sonoko as being a mixture of joy and sadness. She couldn't tell which was greater._

 _"Look!" Sonoko said. "I don't know who you are, or how you got this number, but you can't convince me that you're Ran! She's dead. I was at her funeral. I staid the night in the room with her body and I-_

 _"Sonoko, you need to listen to me, " Ran's voice said, shaking. "I don't have long to talk. I'll try again later, and hopefully we'll have a little more time then."_

 _"Ran...is that really you?"_

 _"Yes!"_

 _"B-but you died!"_

 _"I know. I'm not completely sure where I am now. But it's nowhere on earth. I can say that much. I'm holding on, and I'm not in any pain. But I really want to talk to you again soon. Please. Um, I have to go now."_

 _"NO! Ran, don't hang up on me, you hear me? Don't hang-_

 _But it was too late. The line went dead._

 _Her whole body trembling and her breathing erratic, Sonoko fell to her knees and stared out into blank space._


	3. Chapter 3

_"Whew, I'm beat," Nancy said to Conan. "Let's go home."_

 _She turned to Sonoko. "So, um, see you later?"_

 _"Okay," Sonoko said._

*ring*

 _Sonoko looked at the number on her phone: it did not look familiar._

 _I swear, she thought, if this is another one of those Americans who think my name is Serena..._

 _She answered. "Moshi-moshi? Who is this?"_

 _The ragged breathing on the other side unnerved her. "Hello? Is this a prank call?"_

 _"Sonoko."_

 _Sonoko's heart skipped a beat. She felt goosebumps on her skin. But she composed herself and repeated: "Who is this?"_

 _"Sonoko, it's me. It's so good to hear your voice again."_

 _The tone of the voice on the other end seemed to Sonoko as being a mixture of joy and sadness. She couldn't tell which was greater._

 _"Look!" Sonoko said. "I don't know who you are, or how you got this number, but you can't convince me that you're Ran! She's dead. I was at her funeral. I staid the night in the room with her body and I-_

 _"Sonoko, you need to listen to me, " Ran's voice said, shaking. "I don't have long to talk. I'll try again later, and hopefully we'll have a little more time then."_

 _"Ran...is that really you?"_

 _"Yes!"_

 _"B-but you died!"_

 _"I know. I'm not completely sure where I am now. But it's nowhere on earth. I can say that much. I'm holding on, and I'm not in any pain. But I really want to talk to you again soon. Please. Um, I have to go now."_

 _"NO! Ran, don't hang up on me, you hear me? Don't hang-_

 _But it was too late. The line went dead._

 _Her whole body trembling and her breathing erratic, Sonoko fell to her knees and stared out into blank space._

 **Opening**

(Shameless by CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE)

Whoo girl you're as cool as ice

Deal me another full deck o' lies

Dontcha dare break yer poker face

Empty my heart's vault at record pace

 _Baby yeeeeeah!_

(Not all that glitters is gold! A pearly white smile can mask a heart as black as coal! The line between ours and the netherworld is disturbed, resulting in a crisis of identity! Perceiving the one and only truth! With the body of a child but the mind of an adult, my name is DETECTIVE CONAN!)

And so we find ourselves at this crossroad again

Per my count, you've lied to me five times tonight

You've woven a tale that'd leave J.R.R. Tolkien speechless

A carefully constructed narrative flimsier than a house of cards

I don't know if I should let you walk away

I don't know if you're worth the trouble

But what I care enough to demand an answer to

"What did I have that you wanted for your own?"

You shameless thing, a web of deceit left in your wake

Antithetical to the driving force that binds people together

A thick veil of mist shrouds the true you that you can't let slip

In the name of all that's true, I'll deconstruct you piece by piece!

 **The Hand That Grabbed Her Ankle, Part Three!**

"Alice's Wish" by Sonoko Suzuki and Ran Mouri

In a world distantly to the future of ours, there lived a man. His name was Dr. Willy, and he was the most brilliant scientist in the world. He had a twin brother, also named Willy, who was the world's greatest chocolate maker, but that's not important.

Dr. Willy, instead of using his genius to benefit humanity, thought himself deserving the rule over the world with an iron fist. He built an army of zombie cyborgs and turned them loose against mankind. From his secret base beneath the lunar soil he issued his commands to his legions of undead warriors, assisted by his zombie cyborg butler, Alice.

Alice was not like the mindless soldiers in Dr. Willy's army. He had fashioned her with great care to be highly intelligent, even independent, and yet fiercely loyal at the same time.

After many bitter years of fighting, the United Nations Resistance Force defeated his armies on earth. Their top leadership resolved to take the fight to Dr. Willy's moon base. The world's economy, as battered as it was, tasked itself with the building of a space force that could launch a final assault against the diabolical scientist. Within 10 months time they had put together a great armada.

During those months, Dr. William underwent great pains to fortify the moon in anticipation of the great defensive battle. Hardened bunkers, anti-air batteries, and highly sophisticated drones awaited the earthlings who dared trespass on his domain.

It was to his great surprise then that within 36 hours the space force commandos were inching in on his location, determined to either capture or kill him. Alice estimated that he only had about twenty or thirty minutes left before they arrived at his location, the deepest recesses of his moon base. It was impossible to retreat any further into the moon's interior.

The doctor growled. "Seal the blast doors!"

"They are already sealed shut, master," Alice replied. "It has only served to slow them down."

"Then...redirect the drones to stop them?" he suggested helplessly.

"We have no drones left," she said. "The life support systems have been irreparably damaged, and as a result we will run out of air in about 45 minutes or an hour at most, even if we can hold off the enemy."

"Then...then we must evacuate!"

"That is impossible, master. The escape pod was destroyed with the hangar bay, and there is no way to get there without running into the enemy. Furthermore, where would we go?"

The doctor began to tremble, out of frustration and terror.

(And that's as far as they got.)

 **Scene Transition**

 _"And so, to demonstrate his point, he tells a story, of a shepherd named Gyges. One day, while tending to his sheep Gyges stumbles upon a cave. Inside it he finds a..."_

 _Sonoko's arms were folded and resting against the desk. Her head was resting against her arms. However, she was not slowly drifting off to sleep._

 _After all, how could she? Granted, she'd barely gotten a wink of sleep last night, but the same excitement that was responsible for such followed her to school that morning._

*rrrmmph*

 _As soon as she felt the vibration, Sonoko's hand reached for the phone with lightning speed. She stood up:_

 _"Sensei, I have to take this call right away!" she interrupted._

 _"Huh? Okay."_

 _She fast-walked to the sliding door and walked out._

 _As soon as she was out, she answered:_

 _"Ran, is that you?"_

 _Instead, a man with a funny accent replied:_

 _"This ees tech support. There ees a problem with your computer. I help you fix it."_

 _She hung up with a frustrated sigh._ _She re-entered the classroom and sat back down._

 **Scene Transition**

 _Nakamichi vaulted over the bar._

 _"Next," the gym coach said._

 _Sonoko and Masumi stood in back of the line._

 _"Oi," Masumi whispered, "what's up with you today?"_

 _"Huh?"_

 _"You've been glued to your phone since you arrived at school today. It's like you're expecting a phone call of life-changing importance."_

 _"You could say that," Sonoko said._

 _"Well?"_

 _"I'll tell you when I'm sure. I could be wrong, and I don't want to embarrass myself if I am."_

 _Or get your hopes up just to dash them later, she thought._

 **Scene Transition**

 _"Alright," Furui-sensei said, "we'll wrap up our discussion of the Middle East and the Israeli-Arab conflict next time."_

 _The students grabbed their stuff and headed out the door._

 _As they reached the front entrance of the school:_

 _"Oi, Sonoko, wait up," Sera said._

 _She caught up to the rich girl._

 _"Do you wanna maybe go get-_

 _"Sorry, not today," Sonoko said. "Maybe tomorrow. Bye!"_

 _And with that she ran towards home._

 ** _Scene Transition_**

 _Without even bothering to say hi to her family, or her sister who'd dropped by for a visit, Sonoko headed straight for her room and closed the door._

 _Figuring that it might be a while before she got that call, she got out the geometry study book that she'd borrowed from the school library and opened it to the page where she'd last placed the bookmark._

 _This bookmark was given to me by Ran as a present for starting high school, she realized. Man, that was a long time ago._

 _About fifteen minutes into her half-hearted effort at studying, her phone started vibrating._

 _Not wanting to get all riled up over a false alarm, she looked at the number. Though she did not remember the number from last night, it wasn't the number of anybody she knew, so she knew there was a good chance this was it._

 _She answered and put it up to her ear._

 _"Sonoko? Hey, it's me again. I called you last night, right?"_

 _"Huuh? You don't remember?"_

 _"Sorry, time doesn't pass the same way here. I just wanted to make sure it hadn't been more than a day."_

 _"Time doesn't...Ran, are you...in heaven?" Sonoko asked._

 _"No, not in the normal sense. I think...I think I'm trapped in limbo."_

 _"You're trapped in what?"_

 _"Hmm, how do I explain this? Uhh, well, I'm dead, so I can't go back to earth, but I can't go to heaven either."_

 _Sonoko stood up. "No! Ran, that's impossible! You of all people can't have gone to hell!"_

 _"Hey, hey, Sonoko, I didn't say anything about hell. As I said last night, I'm not in any pain, so this can't be hell. That being said, this can't be heaven either. So that must mean I'm trapped in limbo. It means I'm stuck, and I can't move on to where I'm supposed to go."_

 _"You can't go to heaven, you mean?"_

 _"Or, it could mean I can't reincarnate. That could be what comes next. Regardless, I can't do it. I'm stuck."_

 _"Ran, why can't you move on?" Sonoko pressed. "Tell me."_

 _"Actually, I don't wanna do that just yet."_

 _"What?"_

 _"Whenever I move on, that means I'll never be able to speak to you again," Ran explained. "I want a little more time with you before we cross that bridge."_

 _Sonoko was silent._

 _"Sonoko, when the time comes, I'll need you to do exactly as I say. Do you understand?"_

 _Sonoko gulped, and then nodded. "Y-Yeah."_

 _I'll never be able to speak to her again, Sonoko repeated mentally._

 _"I know what you're thinking," Ran said. "Never is a long, long time. That's why I want to make the most of however long we've got left."_

 _"And...And...And how long is that gonna...?!" Sonoko demanded, her voice cracking up._

 _"Possibly a week or two, or maybe as long as a month," Ran said. "I'm not entirely sure how long I have. But the powers that be aren't gonna wait forever. They're gonna start to get impatient soon enough. I'll delay it as long as I can, but...when I'm calling you for the last time, I'll be sure to tell you, Sonoko. I can give you that much, at least."_

 _Sonoko was silent again. But then she clenched her fists, took a deep breath, and declared:_

 _"In that case, we'd better not waste even one precious second, Ran!"_

 _"That's the spirit," Ran said in a very familiar and strangely comforting tone of voice. "I've told you all I know, more or less. Now I got a few questions for you. Are you ready?"_

 _"You betcha," Sonoko said enthusiastically. "We got a lot of catching up to do, you and me."_

 **Scene Transition**

 _"First of all, with all that business with Russia and Inclement Weather Daniels, have they impeached Ronald Rump yet?"_

 _"No, not yet," Sonoko said. "And it's starting to look like they never will."_

 _"Oh. Nothing really big's happened in the world since then?"_

 _"No, it's only been a couple of months," Sonoko said._

 _Only a couple of months, she thought. It feels weird saying it. Almost blasphemous or sacrilegious in a way._

 _"Okay. Any really good movies or shows come out?"_

 _"One or two," Sonoko said. "Oh, but_ Your Atomic Romance _got back together. I was at a concert where they were playing last night."_

 _"No way! Is that where you were when I-_

 _"Y-yeah."_

 _"What was it like?" Ran pressed excitedly._

 _"Oh man, I wish you could've been there! They wrote this awesome new song that they played at the end and I really think it's gonna be a big hit when they release their newest album later this year."_

 _"Really? Since you were there with your phone surely you recorded it."_

 _"Yeah. I did. You wanna hear it?"_

 _"Of course I do! Who do you think you're talking to?"_

 _"Just a warning, though: the audio quality of the recording is crap. Too much background noise."_

 _Ran laughed. "I'll listen to whatever you got."_

 _Sonoko played it:_

Manumit the best of me, that I can't be without

I'm asking you to set me free of these infernal doubts

I know 'twas not our destiny, though passionate our bout

Please give me back the rest of me, I wanna walk a different route

 _"Could you hear it alright?" Sonoko asked._

 _Ran gave a verbal nod. "I'm glad I got to hear that...but then again, now I wish I was still there so I could listen to the real thing."_

 _There was a pause._

 _"Ran, you said you might reincarnate, right?"_

 _"It's a possibility, yeah."_

 _Sonoko swallowed, and then: "If you do, then I'll find you again. I'll search the world over until we meet up once more."_

 _"Now now, what have I always told you about making promises you can't keep?"_

 _"I'm serious, you know! I'll talk to experts. Those kinds of people that I always thought were a bunch of quacks. They'll help me pinpoint who you are."_

 _"And then what? It's not like I'd have any memories of you. When I reincarnate, that new life would be all that mattered to me, right? I mean, in this life I never cared about who I was before I became Ran Mouri, right? Besides: what if, when you meet me, you can't help but be disappointed?"_

 _"Huh?"_

 _"What if I turn out to be a complete scumbag, a murderous psychopath?"_

 _Sonoko laughed. "That's ridiculous."_

 _"Is it?"_

 _"Of course! Ran, there's no way somebody like you could be capable of that. You're just about the kindest and gentlest soul I know of."_

 _"Thank you, but what would any of that matter if I became someone else? Nothing of your best friend, my mom and dad's daughter...Shinichi's girlfriend...nothing of that person would survive, right?"_

 _Sonoko wasn't sure how to respond._

 _"That's why this is important," Ran continued. "What we're doing now, that is. These phone calls, us talking to each other. Because when these calls end, I'll be gone for good. And so the responsibility rests on your shoulders: Remember me, not only as I was when I was alive, but remember also how I conducted myself when I knew that I hardly had any time left. You of all people are able to understand who Ran Mouri truly was. And as long as you remember, a part of me will live on, until at long last it's your turn to pass on, which I hope won't be for a long time. This is my final request: keep that part of me alive for as long as you can, and one day, in some other life, I'll repay the favor."_

 _You don't have to give anything in return, Sonoko thought. Just don't let these calls be the last time that we're together again._

 **Scene Transition**

 _The days that followed were quite eventful. The day after the abovementioned call, Ran spent an hour and a half helping Sonoko study for a biology test._

 _The day after that, Sonoko took the phone with her to a karaoke joint. She held the phone up to the microphone and Ran sung into it. They did Y_ ume No Naka E _as a duet, and several other contemporary renditions of old classics as well._

 _Whenever they ran out of stuff to do, they just played 20 Questions, Shogi (with a board that Sonoko found somewhere in the attic), and so on. But then, one day..._

 _"Umm...hold on, my king shouldn't be able to move, right?" Ran said._

 _"Yeah, you're right," Sonoko said. "Looks like it's checkmate. Whew! Finally, I beat you!"_

 _"Only took until your third try," Ran said._

 _"That's funny though," Sonoko said. "You played this game simply by memorizing the board, without being able to actually see it or anything. I never knew you were capable of that."_

 _"Neither did I, to be honest," Ran said. "There must be something about being dead that makes my mind work at its peak."_

 _"...Then surely you remember *it*?" Sonoko said. "We never got a chance to finish."_

 _" Oh, that? Yeah, you sort of mentioned it briefly last time, if I'm not mistaken. But surely the competition's already come and went, right?"_

 _"Yeah, but I was thinking we could finish and then I could hand it in to the school. As the final project that we ever worked on together."_

 _"Huuuh?! Didn't I make it clear already that-_

 _"I know, I know. We can just say that we completed it before you died, or that I completed it myself afterwards. Nobody has to know. So...what do you say? Are you in?"_

 _"I don't know..."_

 _"Ran, you know that unfinished story's been bothering me for months. If we don't get it done, it'll probably bother me for the rest of my-_

 _"Okay, okay! Geez, you didn't have to put it like that. Now you're making me feel bad for dying."_

 _They both had a chuckle over that._

 _"But for real, will you help me finish_ Alice's Wish _?" Sonoko asked._

 _"I'll do my best," Ran said. "But I can't guarantee we'll get it done before I have to hang up for good."_

 **Scene Transition**

 **The Next Day**

 _"Dang it," Nancy said, nearing the grocery. "Mom didn't give me any money. I guess I'm gonna have to buy the flour with my own money and ask her to pay me back later."_

 _She arrived at the grocery, opened the door, and-_

 _"Oh, hey," Nancy said._

 _"Hey," Sonoko said, holding a paper bag with vegetables._

 _"So, um, are you busy tomorrow?" Nancy asked. " if not, I was wondering if we could-_

 _"Oh, um, actually, I can't," Sonoko said. "I have, uh, stuff to do. Bye."_

 _As she was leaving, Sonoko felt a tinge of doubt and guilt, but she quickly shrugged those feelings to the wayside, and in that moment she had a thought, one that was as terrible as it sounded:_

 _"I don't need her anymore."_

 **Scene Transition**

 **Two Days Later**

 _Having just concluded her daily chat with Ran, Sonoko was in a good mood._

 _But then:_

"I'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world..."

 _The cheesy 90s ringtone alerting her as to who the caller was, she answered:_

 _"Shinichi-kun?"_

 _"Uh, hey," Shinichi's voice replied. "You know that one day I actually showed up for class after my disappearance? In geography I noticed there was a new teacher."_

 _"Furui-san?"_

 _"Yeah, him. He's still around?"_

 _"Unfortunately, yes."_

 _"Unfortunately?"_

 _"That jerk recently gave me a D on a big test!" Sonoko fumed. "He says Australia isn't in Europe! I mean, yes it is! Just look at a map!"_

 _That's Austria, you dolt, Conan thought with a deadpan look. "So, um, listen. About him...there's something I need to know."_

 _"Yes?"_

 _"When he writes something on the board, and then he needs to erase it, how does he go about it? That is to say, how does he use an eraser?"_

 _"Um, well, he, um, oh yeah. He makes a diagonal sweeping motion, from top left to bottom right, starting at the corner of the leftmost kanji character. After that, he turns it 90 degrees and goes up right, just like the aforementioned movement. Gosh, I just said 'aforementioned'. Bleh. Anyway, let's say he's trying to erase somebody's name, last name to the left and first name to the right. So at this point he would've erased the last name. To erase the first name, he mirrors what he just did, starting at the top right and brushing to the bottom left. You get the idea?"_

 _"Yeah. Great memory you've got there, actually. I'm impressed. Well, nice talking to y-_

 _"Wait! Before you hang up, I just wanna ask you...how're you feeling? Are you doing okay?"_

 _"Yeah. Sure. What's this about?"_

 _"About Ran, of course!"_

 _Ah dang it, he thought. I forgot she doesn't know. "I-I'm doing fine. I think I've gotten over it. Is that all?"_

 _"Y-yeah, but-_

 _"Alright then, bye."_

 _He hung up._

 _"Gotten over it?" she repeated to herself out loud, incredulous._

 **Scene Transition**

 _"Good morning, class. I'll be your new geography teacher, for the time being. "_

 _"Huh?"_

 _"Yo, what happened the Furui-sensei? "_

 _"Is he sick or something?"_

 _"There was...an incident last night," the substitute teacher said. "I'm not going to get into the details, but suffice to say he is never going to be teaching here again. So, anyway, if I'm not mistaken last time you'd only gotten halfway through that video about..."_

 _Absurd, Sonoko thought. Gotten over it? Was that even Shinichi on the phone?_

 _Wait, she realized. Is it possible that... he's already received a call from Ran? That would explain it, I guess. But if that was the case, then why wouldn't she just come out and tell me? Why would she insist that I not tell anyone?_

 **Scene Transition**

 _And so, during lunch period Sonoko did that one thing she was told never to do: She dialed that number._

 _After about thirty seconds of waiting there was a response:_

 _"Sonoko, what are you doing? Didn't I tell you not to-_

 _"Look, I'm sorry, but I couldn't stand to wait. It's important."_

 _"Huh?"_

 _"Ran, did you tell...him? "_

 _"Did I tell who?"_

 _"You know, Shinichi! Did you tell him? About you, I mean. Have you called him?"_

 _Sonoko didn't realize that Masumi, who was sitting at the adjacent table, could hear her._

 _"Of course not! I already told you that I hadn't, right? What's this ab...D*MMIT, Yoshichika! What'd I tell you about-_

 _And that was it. The jig was up._

 _"...R-Ran?" Sonoko began, still refusing to believe it:_

 _That voice, the one which sounded exactly like Ran's, did in that last sentence suddenly transition into that of a grown man rather than a teenage girl's. It descended in pitch very smoothly within the span of about two seconds._

 _There was heavy breathing on the other side, and then the man's voice said:_

 _"Don't ever call this number again. Goodbye."_

 **Scene Transition**

 _Three days had passed since that last call. No matter how she tried, or how patiently she waited, the person on the other end of that phone, whoever it was, Ran or otherwise, would not make any further contact with her._

 _"I'm sorry, the number you've called is not available at this time. Please leave a message or-_

 _Frustrated out of her wits, Sonoko threw her phone at the_

 _It was then that the door opened. Masumi stepped in._

 _Sonoko sighed. " Look, I'm really sorry, especially with how I've been blowing you off lately, but now just isn't a good-_

 _"You've been getting calls," Masumi said, "from Ran-chan...right?"_

 _Sonoko just stared at the flat-chested tomboy in shock and confusion._

 _"You were speaking a little too loud during your last call," Masumi explained. "Care to tell me about it?"_

Fifteen minutes later...

 _"...Wow," Masumi said. "I can't even imagine how you must be feeling right now."_

 _"I can't let this go," Sonoko said, sniffling, having just finished crying. "I just can't. I have to know...how much of it was real? How much of it was a lie? If it was a lie, then what was the point in all of it? I have to know, and I'm afraid I'll never be able to move on if I'm left without any answers."_

 _Masumi stood up. "Then let's get you some answers."_

 _"Huh?"_

 _"You said you've been dialing that number," Masumi said. "That means there's an actual phone address, which you know. Let's check the yellow pages, find the source of the calls, and check it out for ourselves."_

 _"D-Do you really mean it?" Sonoko said._

 _"Of course! This isn't just your problem any more. Whoever this person is, they've been making a mockery of Ran for all this time. That's unforgivable in my book. So what was the first few digits? You know, the area code."_

 _Sonoko answered:_

81-0138

 _A quick search of the internet provided a rough estimate of the caller's location:_

 _"Looks like we're going to Hakodate," Masumi said._

 **Ending**

(Secret of my Heart by Mai Kuraki)

 _Donna kotoba ni kaete_

 _Kimi ni tsutaerareru darou_

 _Arekara ikutsumo no kisetsu ga_

 _Toorisugita keredo_

 _Itsumo soba de waratteru_

 _Watashi nimo ienai koto ga mada hitotsu dake aru_

 _SECRET OF MY HEART_

 _Utagattemo nai ne_

 _Itsu datte sukoshi no mirai ga areba_

 _Shinjitsu wa te ni irerareru hazu_

 _I CANNOT SAY mou sukoshi dake_

 _I'M WAITING FOR A CHANCE_


	4. Chapter 4

_"...And that's the situation," Elena said._

 _In the empty cafeteria Conan, Nancy, and Haibara were being briefed via speakerphone about the deal with Sonoko._

 _"Hold on," Haibara said. "How do you know this?"_

 _"Masumi knows, and she was gracious enough to inform me right away," Elena answered. "In fact, she was the one who helped Sonoko pinpoint where the calls were coming from."_

 _"When do they leave?" Conan asked._

 _"Tomorrow morning," Elena said. "They won't be having any classes then, and neither will you, so that is the ideal time by all means. Shiho, I guess you don't need to go all that badly. You have the option of sitting this one out."_

 _Haibara shook her head. "No, I'd like to go with them."_

 _"Fair enough. Shinichi, Ran, I trust the two of you are going no matter what I say?"_

 _"Of course!" Conan said._

 _Nancy was silent._

 _"Good. After school, the two of you need to pack your bags and get ready for the trip. Either convince Sonoko to buy you a ticket or to by car. It goes without saying that if I provide you with a ride it'll raise too many questions, so if nothing else works then ask that Professor of yours for a ride. This situation must be resolved, one way or another, preferably before the Men in Black are able to catch the slightest whiff of it. Do I make myself clear?"_

 _"Yes ma'am," Conan and Haibara said._

 _"Alright, good. The two of you has better get back to class before your teachers start worrying."_

 _"The two of us?" Haibara asked._

 _"Yes. There's something I need to talk to Ran-chan about. Alone."_

 _And so, Conan and Haibara returned to class, leaving Ran to face the music._

 _"This must all be quite baffling to you," Elena said to Ran. "Listen, what I'm about to tell you, do not repeat to Kudo-kun."_

 _"Um, okay. Might I ask why?" Nancy asked._

 _"It's for his own good. It's enough that one person should have to suffer this."_

 _"I don't understand, but okay. I won't tell him. "_

 _"Can I have your word on that?"_

 _"Yes. You have my word."_

 _Elena sighed. "Have I ever told you my religious background?"_

 _"Um, no?"_

 _"I was born and raised into the Anglican Church. My family would attend services twice a year: on Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, and on Easter, which celebrates the anniversary of His death."_

 _"Huh? But isn't Jesus Christ the central figure of Christianity? Why would they celebrate Him dying?"_

 _"They say that He died for the sins of humanity. Anyways, when I grew up and went to college, I came to reject organized religion as false. I was once a hard atheist, but now I consider myself to be more of an agnostic. I don't believe in the soul, or that there's a Heaven. Or Hell for that matter, of course. But just for a second, let's ask the question: what if I'm wrong? What if we humans do have eternal souls?"_

 _"Well, the soul can exist independently of the body, so life would continue after mortal death," Nancy said._

 _"Yes, but it goes the other way around too. If a dead person were revived, would the soul which had departed from the body be forced back into it?"_

 _"Heeeehh?! what kind of a morbid question is that?"_

 _"If you'd please give me a straight answer, I'd appreciate that."_

 _"Hmm, well, I imagine it would. I don't buy that if a person's heart stops beating for thirty seconds, and then he's resuscitated, that he'd be soulless."_

 _"Red herring. When your heart stops beating, your brain remains intact for a while. You aren't really dead yet, regardless of what standard medical practice claims. Of course, it wouldn't be enough for you to loss consciousness, such as when you're in a coma, since nobody would say you're dead when you're asleep. I define death as the total cessation of brain function, also called brain death. After that dire point was crossed, if your brain was magically brought back to life, would your soul be restored to the body?"_

 _Nancy was silent._

 _"The truth is, we have no way of knowing," Elena said. "Just some speculating on my part for a second: the soul's residual connection to the body is broken gradually after death. In the minutes immediately after, there might very well be no issue, but...Ran, you were dead for several days. Do you know...do you know what I'm saying?"_

 _Nancy hesitated, but then answered:_

 _"A-Are you saying that my soul...might not have returned to my body after I died?"_

 _"*Your* soul? I think you misunderstand. If my concerns are grounded in fact, you are not Ran. You are the body that Ran inhabited. Your thought processes are the exact same as hers would've been had her soul been reunited with her body, playing on autopilot. Make no mistake: yours may be an exact copy of Ran's personality, but it is a copy, nonetheless. You are an advanced biological computer, and nothing more. If it turns out to be the case that your friend Sonoko has somehow been in communication with Ran's soul, then that makes you little more than a pretender, a fraud even...Note of course that I could be wrong. I'm only human, as such I'm in no position to make a conclusive judgment about the nature of the soul, and of existence. What I presented just now was one theory, one that presumes a supernatural aspect to existence. If the material is all that is, then there's no reason to assume there's any legitimate distinction between the you that is now and the Ran that was prior to her death."_

 _"But...if you are right, and everything that I'm thinking isn't real, if I am not in fact Ran, then..."_

 _"Again, I shouldn't try to tell you what to do, because I don't know the truth about you, but...even if you are just a copy...well, you shouldn't let that change anything. Kudo-kun wishes to be with the love of his life. Whatever you are, know that you're the closest thing he's got to that, the closest thing there is to Ran Mouri. If he doesn't know the truth, then he can be happy with you regardless. You want him to be happy, no?"_

 _"Of course I do!" Nancy protested, her voice starting to break up. "How can you say otherwise? But, I don't think that I...that I should be...!"_

 _Nancy abruptly hung up, fell onto her hands and knees and broke down sobbing._

 **Opening**

(Shameless by CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE)

Whoo girl you're as cool as ice

Deal me another full deck o' lies

Dontcha dare break yer poker face

Empty my heart's vault at record pace

 _Baby yeeeeeah!_

(Not all that glitters is gold! A pearly white smile can mask a heart as black as coal! The line between ours and the netherworld is disturbed, resulting in a crisis of identity! Perceiving the one and only truth! With the body of a child but the mind of an adult, my name is DETECTIVE CONAN!)

And so we find ourselves at this crossroad again

Per my count, you've lied to me five times tonight

You've woven a tale that'd leave J.R.R. Tolkien speechless

A carefully constructed narrative flimsier than a house of cards

I don't know if I should let you walk away

I don't know if you're worth the trouble

But what I care enough to demand an answer to

"What did I have that you wanted for your own?"

You shameless thing, a web of deceit left in your wake

Antithetical to the driving force that binds people together

A thick veil of mist shrouds the true you that you can't let slip

In the name of all that's true, I'll deconstruct you piece by piece!

 **The Hand That Grabbed Her Ankle, Part Four!**

 _The next day, Sonoko and Masumi boarded a train that would take them all the way to Shin-Hakodate station in Hokkaido in about four hours time.'_

 _As the door to the train was just about to close, three more people got on:_

 _"Heeeeehh?!" Sonoko said. "What are you doing here?"_

 _"What, it isn't obvious?" Conan said. "I cared about Ran-neechan too, you know. And so did the Professor."_

 _"And I came along mainly because I wanted to see Hokkaido," Haibara said coolly._

 _Conan, Haibara, and the Professor had boarded the train. Of course, the one person who hadn't was..._

 _Well, I guess it's fitting that she isn't here, Sonoko thought. I threw Nancy out like yesterday's trash whenever I ran out of further use for her. So why should she be here for me now? Besides, she never even knew Ran._

 _That was strange for sure, Conan thought. Her decision not to come. Her, of all people...it must've been something that Elena-san told her. If only I knew what that was._

 _This trip is gonna cost me an arm and a leg, The Professor thought._

 **Scene Transition**

 **Four and a Half Hours Later**

 _After arriving in Hakodate proper they left the station, walked over to a nearby seafood restaurant in the Donburi Yokocho Market, and enjoyed a late lunch._

 _"Here you go," the guy behind the counter said as he served them their dishes. "This was all caught fresh earlier today."_

 _Meanwhile, there was a TV mounted on the wall. The local news station was playing:_

 _"Standing here beside me is one of the nearly 50 people who lost their homes in the aftermath of yesterday's fire, which burned down half a city block in what was the third in what's now a string of devastating fires to hit Hakodate..."_

 _They ate, and then Dr. Agasa turned to Masumi and Sonoko:_

 _"So, you do know where the Kojin Shrine is, right?"_

 _"Yeah," Masumi said. "There's just one problem: it's very remote and isolated."_

 **Scene Transition**

 _Masumi wasn't kidding. Every year, huge numbers of tourists flock to Mt. Hakodate. One can ascend to the summit on foot or by cable car, and then be greeted by an amazing view of the city below._

 _However, any mountain has two sides. The other side of Mt. Hakodate, it would turn out, was not frequently traveled. Sonoko, Masumi, Conan, Haibara, and the Professor had to walk all the way around the mountain, and soon found themselves on the temple grounds of Hakodate's only shrine to Kojin, the Shinto deity of the hearth and the kitchen._

 _There was a garden and a traditional Shinto gateway, or_ torii _, and a short set of stairs leading up to it._

 _There was a single large building, constructed in traditional Japanese style, and then a smaller side structure which housed the open-aired shrine to Kojin._

 _A monk was tending to the plants when he saw them_

 _"We have visitors!" he shouted at the top of his lungs._

 _A minute later, three other monks had come outside to meet the five visitors._

 _"Welcome," one of them said, bowing politely. "Are you here to pray to lord Kojin?"_

 _"Uh, no," the Professor said. "We're actually here because..._

 _Sonoko stepped forward. "We're here because somebody's been prank-calling me."_

 _The monks looked at each other nervously._

 _"Let me guess," one of them said. "You've been getting calls from a departed friend or family member?"_

 _"Hey, how did you know?" Masumi demanded._

 _'"U-Um, actually, you're not the first," another one of the four monks said. "Before you, we've had three other parties come here in the last six months searching for answers about that very same thing."_

 _"Huuuuhh?! the five of them exclaimed._

 _"Please, have dinner with us and we'll explain," that monk said._

 **Scene Transition**

 _The meal served that night at the Shrine was ramen._

 _Sonoko and comrades sat on one side of the table, the four monks and the older headmaster of the shrine sat on the other side._

 _"We apologize if it's lacking in flavor," one of the monks said. "We've blown through most of this month's pension so we've been having to make do with ramen straight out of a cup.''_

 _"Oh, no, it's very good," Sonoko and the Professor lied._

 _"You said earlier that you'd tell us what you know," Conan said._

 _The monk who invited them to dinner nodded. "The first person who came here for the same reason as you did was a German immigrant who worked as a customized prosthetics maker in Yokosuka. He had married a Japanese woman."_

 _"And she died?" Haibara guessed._

 _"No, he said she's doing fine, but he was good friends with her brother, his brother-in-law, who died 3 years ago under...*ahem* less than graceful circumstances, in a freak accident of sorts. Anyways, they were in communication with each other for about four weeks, via telephone, and then the calls ceased. In the last call, he and his wife were told to come here."_

 _"That's strange," Sonoko said. "The person claiming to Ran said that he or she never contacted anyone besides me, but in that case then the caller contacted two people?"_

 _"That's what they said then," the monk said. "The second party was a single person, a woman employed as a paralegal whose fiance died in a big car wreck. She says they were only in contact for about a week and a half, and then the calls abruptly stopped."_

 _"How did she know to come here?" Masumi asked._

 _"She traced the phone address of the caller," another one of the monks said._

 _"The third caller was a veterinarian whose older brother, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer. The two of them were in contact for about 3 weeks, and then it stopped. But on the last call, he told him to come here."_

 _"And when they came, we told them exactly what I'm about to tell you," the headmaster said calmly. "We have no idea why this all is happening, or why this shrine seems to be at the center of it."_

 _"By the way," Conan said, "there's something I'm very curious about: which phone is it? The one that was the source of the calls."_

 _"Oh, that? Actually, some of the other people asked that same question. Let me show you."_

 _He pointed to a phone there in the dining room, showed them one that was in the kitchen, and then led the guests to the headmaster's private quarters, where there was one sitting on a desk._

 _"All three of these phones are linked the same landline," he said. "If you call that number, all three phones will ring."_

 _"Can I test that out?" Sonoko asked._

 _"Sure. Go ahead."_

 _Sonoko dialed the number by memory and then pushed "Call"._

 _Sure enough, all three phones went off at the same time._

 _Satisfied with the outcome of her experiment, Sonoko ended the call, and the phones went silent again._

 _"So ultimately, if it was some kind of prank call, any one of us could've done it," the monk said._

 _"No," Sonoko said. "Not quite. I know how to narrow this down a little further. Which one of you is named Yoshichika?"_

 _" I-I am, " the monk who'd done most of the talking up until this point said. "It wasn't me, though! I swear!"_

 _"I know that," Sonoko said. "What I meant to say is: you're the one guy here who couldn't have done it. But if nothing else, you confirmed just now that the person who picked up the phone during that last call was one of you four!"_

 _She pointed to the other three monks, and to the headmaster._

 _"Don't be absurd," the headmaster said nonchalantly, finishing off his bowl of ramen. "I know all my boys well enough to tell you with complete confidence that none of them would ever be responsible for such mischief."_

 _"To be honest, these occurrences have been just terrible for us," one of the monks said. "You see, this shrine was founded in the late 50s and since then it's struggled to compete with Seicho-ji in Osaka, since they have a bigger and way more popular shrine to lord Kojin. Not enough people come here and put coins in the donation box for this place to be self-sufficient. The only reason we're still open is that the city's been providing us with a fairly generous pension for all these years. But now they're blaming us for the complaints lodged by some of those people like yourselves, and they've been threatening to take away our funding if something like this were to happen again."_

 _Yoshichika looked at Dr. Agasa's cup: "Oh, you're done? Let me get you some more."_

 _"No thank you, I'm good," the Professor said._

 _"No, I insist," Yoshichika said._

 _He took The Professor's cup and went into the kitchen._

 _"Oi, Sonoko," Masumi whispered, " What do you think? Do you recognize the voice of the caller?"_

 _Sonoko shook her head. "No, and that person's voice was agitated, unlike all these people here."_

 _Yoshichika returned. "Here you go."_

 _The Professor immediately noticed the small slip of paper under the tea cup. He took it, unfolded it, and read it:_

"I can't speak truthfully and openly right now. Pretend to leave and then meet me at lord Kojin's shrine in exactly one hour. I'll tell you everything then."

 _The Professor quickly put the note in his pocket, but it seemed apparent that all the monks knew what Yoshichika had just done._

 _"Um, okay, I guess this trip was a bust," Dr. Agasa said, standing up. "Thank you for your kind hospitality, and we'll be on our way now."_

 **Scene Transition**

 _"Sorry Shinichi, Ai-chan, Hakase... I can't do this. Just go on without me. Bye!"_

 _That was what Nancy said at the last minute whenever they were about to purchase their tickets for the bullet train (_ shinkansen _) to Hokkaido. Before any of them had a chance to convince her otherwise, she turned the other way and ran as fast as she could._

 _Now, she was walking home, by herself. It was snowing very lightly._

 _How could I have not figured this out sooner? she thought. Even if the calls Sonoko's been getting turn out to be a hoax, it won't change anything. I should've known it wouldn't be so easy to cheat death, no...to cheat God. Death is God's rightful domain, right? The afterlife, heaven or hell. It's an expression of divine sovereignty over the hubris of man. What kind of extreme arrogance leads us to believe that we can steal from God so easily?_

 _Like Elena-san said, I am a pretender, she thought. I'm leading on Shinichi now, but when we both die he's going to find that I can't ever follow him to that other place, since I am a creature of this world and this world alone...It's only fair that I break this off here and now, so that his suffering in the end will be less. After all, the more you love, the more tightly you hold on, the more painful it'll be when the righteous cleaver of God forces you to part ways...But how can I do that? He'll never let me go, not willingly._

 _There was only one way. She had to take her own-_

 _"Ooh yeah, I knew there were goodies in here."_

 _Shigeo Yasuda climbed out of a nearby dumpster, triumphantly holding a half-eaten taco._

 _"Huh?" he said. "You're that girl from the other day. Your name's Nancy, right?"_

 _Nancy didn't feel like stopping to talk to this guy. She turned around and began to continue walking._

 _"Ey, kid, dontcha ignore yer elders when they be tryin to talk to ya, ya hear? What's wrong?"_

 _"Nothing's wrong," she said dismissively._

 _"Now dat just ain't fair. What you take me for, an idiot? Yer lips they be blabbin one thing but yer heart's sayin something else entirely. That ain't healthy. I know that much. Come on, tell me what this is all about. A girl like you's much too young to be carrying a burden like whatever's on your plate."_

 _"Maybe I'm not as young as you think," Nancy said._

 _"Yeah, I know that," Yasuda said. "I know I only got a few grey hairs, but I think of myself as being old as dirt. Age is relative for sure. Now enough evading the question."_

 _Nancy sighed. I guess I have to tell someone, she thought._

 _"I don't know who I am. I'm not sure if I even have a soul. And I mean that literally."_

 _Yasuda suddenly looked extremely serious. "That's no light matter. This I know. Life can't be worth living under such conditions. Even confirming that you don't has got to be better than not knowing. So...how badly do you want to know?"_

 _"More than anything!" Ran/Nancy confessed. "You're right, this uncertainty is no way to live!"_

 _"Alright then. Let's find out, shall we?"_

 _Suddenly, Yasuda sat down right there on the pavement. "Listen here: this is a crapshoot. I don't know how well this is gonna work, since the last time I tried this on someone there were, well, let's just say there were some unintended consequences. So it's paramount that you do exactly as I say. First of all: look me straight in the eye. Do not break my gaze, and try to blink as little as possible. Don't move a muscle."_

 _He put three of his fingers on Ran's face._

 _"W-What are you, some kind of medium?" Nancy asked._

 _"Hmm, medium. I like the sound of that one. One guy I'm familiar with compares me to the Serpent, but I don't like that comparison at all. The Serpent was one bad Joe. He didn't give humanity any special knowledge worth knowing, and then he made humans bear the brunt of the punishment for their rebellion against God. I'd much rather be compared to Prometheus, the Greek god who stole the secret of fire and shared it with humanity. That was a truly awesome development, one which arguably kickstarted human civilization. And he alone took on the due penalty for his actions. He was a true humanitarian, an extraordinary individual, though fictional, and I consider him to be a much worthier role model. Now then, let's get started."_

 **Scene Transition**

 _One hour had passed. Dr. Agasa and the four others snuck around back and returned onto the shrine grounds._

 _They stood near the place where worshippers prayed to Kojin. But:_

 _"Come on," Sonoko said , tapping her foot impatiently. "Where is he?"_

 _They waited about five more minutes, and then finally they went up to the front door and knocked._

 _One of the monks answered the door._

 _"Excuse me," Agasa said. "Is Yoshichika-kun in there?"_

 _"Huh?"_

 _"I-I'm honesty kind of embarassed that I have to tell you this, but he and I actually agreed to meet privately."_

 _" ...I see. Well, he's been in the shower for the past 25 minutes or so. "_

 _"Does he normally take showers that long?" Haibara asked._

 _The monk shook his head. "No. This is highly unusual. Yoshichika's the most punctual of all of us, save the headmaster. Come in."_

 _They walked into the room with two sinks. The bathroom door was open, but the door to the shower room was closed._

 _The monk knocked on the door. "Oi, Yoshichika. Hurry it up, will ya? Your company's here."_

 _No answer._

 _The monk left and then came back with a key. "Hey, if you don't answer me I'm coming on in, whether you're dressed or not."_

 _After a few seconds passed, the monk sighed and unlocked the door to the shower._

 _He opened the door and-_

 _Sonoko screamed._

 _"...Oh," the monk said calmly, "I guess we'd better call an ambulance."_

 _Sonoko's scream caused the other monks and the headmaster to come running._

 _"What is all this commotion about?" the headmaster asked._

 _It was Yoshichika. He had fallen over and hit the back of his head on the metal shower faucet, killing him._

 **Ending**

(Secret of my Heart by Mai Kuraki)

 _Donna kotoba ni kaete_

 _Kimi ni tsutaerareru darou_

 _Arekara ikutsumo no kisetsu ga_

 _Toorisugita keredo_

 _Itsumo soba de waratteru_

 _Watashi nimo ienai koto ga mada hitotsu dake aru_

 _SECRET OF MY HEART_

 _Utagattemo nai ne_

 _Itsu datte sukoshi no mirai ga areba_

 _Shinjitsu wa te ni irerareru hazu_

 _I CANNOT SAY mou sukoshi dake_

 _I'M WAITING FOR A CHANCE_

 **Next Conan's Hint:** Thunder


	5. Chapter 5

_One hour had passed. Dr. Agasa and the four others snuck around back and returned onto the shrine grounds._

 _They stood near the place where worshippers prayed to Kojin. But:_

 _"Come on," Sonoko said, tapping her foot impatiently. "Where is he?"_

 _They waited about five more minutes, and then finally they went up to the front door and knocked._

 _One of the monks answered the door._

 _"Excuse me," Agasa said. "Is Yoshichika-kun in there?"_

 _"Huh?"_

 _"I-I'm honesty kind of embarassed that I have to tell you this, but he and I actually agreed to meet privately."_

 _" ...I see. Well, he's been in the shower for the past 25 minutes or so. "_

 _"Does he normally take showers that long?" Haibara asked._

 _The monk shook his head. "No. This is highly unusual. Yoshichika's the most punctual of all of us, save the headmaster. Come in."_

 _They walked into the room with two sinks. The bathroom door was open, but the door to the shower room was closed._

 _The monk knocked on the door. "Oi, Yoshichika. Hurry it up, will ya? Your company's here."_

 _No answer._

 _The monk left and then came back with a key. "Hey, if you don't answer me I'm coming on in, whether you're dressed or not."_

 _After a few seconds passed, the monk sighed and unlocked the door to the shower._

 _He opened the door and-_

 _Sonoko screamed._

 _"...Oh," the monk said calmly, "I guess we'd better call an ambulance."_

 _Sonoko's scream caused the other monks and the headmaster to come running._

 _"What is all this commotion about?" the headmaster asked._

 _It was Yoshichika. He had fallen over and hit the back of his head on the metal shower faucet, killing him._

 **Opening**

(Shameless by CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE)

Whoo girl you're as cool as ice

Deal me another full deck o' lies

Dontcha dare break yer poker face

Empty my heart's vault at record pace

 _Baby yeeeeeah!_

(Not all that glitters is gold! A pearly white smile can mask a heart as black as coal! The line between ours and the netherworld is disturbed, resulting in a crisis of identity! Perceiving the one and only truth! With the body of a child but the mind of an adult, my name is DETECTIVE CONAN!)

And so we find ourselves at this crossroad again

Per my count, you've lied to me five times tonight

You've woven a tale that'd leave J.R.R. Tolkien speechless

A carefully constructed narrative flimsier than a house of cards

I don't know if I should let you walk away

I don't know if you're worth the trouble

But what I care enough to demand an answer to

"What did I have that you wanted for your own?"

You shameless thing, a web of deceit left in your wake

Antithetical to the driving force that binds people together

A thick veil of mist shrouds the true you that you can't let slip

In the name of all that's true, I'll deconstruct you piece by piece!

 **The Hand That Grabbed Her Ankle, Part Five!**

It was a fine spring day, many years ago.

Looking back to make sure nobody was following her, young Ran went and climbed inside the jungle gym on the school yard. She sat down in the dirt.

"Okay, what is it that's so important?"

"Shh, not so loud," young Sonoko scolded with a whisper. "Okay, here's the deal: You know how I promised Kondo-kun I'd look after his pet hamster, Cthulhu, while he's away visiting his grandparents in Tsushima?"

"Yeah? What happened?"

"Actually, um, I completely forgot to go over to his house and feed it or give it water, so when I went up there for the first time yesterday it was already dead."

"That's terrible!"

"I know, and I feel just awful about it now. I flushed him down the toilet, since he was still little when he died."

"But Kondo-kun's still going to know that it's not in its cage! What are you going to do?" Ran asked.

"I've already decided: when he gets back, I'll just tell him that it escaped."

"Huh?"

"Yeah, I know, I'll still get in trouble, but at least this way he won't know his hamster died. I mean, he really loved that poor thing, from what I can tell. He even had pictures of it up in his room. This way, he'll at least have hope that his pet is still alive, that maybe one day it'll come back to him."

There was a pause, and then Ran said:

" ...No, you can't do that. "

 **Scene Transition**

 _The body of Yoshichika, a monk, age 25, was carried off in a stretcher. Police cars were parked in the nearest paved road and the officers arrived at the scene on foot._

 _"So that's what happened," Inspector Tsubaki, the local police officer placed in charge of this crime scene, said._

 _The Inspector looked at the crime scene. "This shower room doesn't have window. You say one of the monks used a key to unlock the door?"_

 _"Yes, that was me," the monk in question said. "And I know what you're thinking: somebody could've just unlocked the door with the key and then murdered him, right?"_

 _"No, that would seem to be impossible," Conan said._

 _"Huh?" the Inspector said. "Did you say something, little boy?"_

 _"Ignore him, Officer," Sonoko said with a scowl. "He always does stuff like this."_

 _"Always?" the Inspector repeated. "This isn't your first crime scene?"_

 _"But see here, Inspector," Conan said in a childish voice. "The doorknob: if you look closely it has traces of dust, right?"_

 _The Inspector got a closer look. "Yeah, you're right. I imagine that the five monks who lived here showered multiple times a week, so there would be no opportunity for the dust to slowly accumulate. That means the dust must've been from when it came in contact with the key. The key must've been sitting in one place for a long time until it was suddenly taken from its resting place to unlock this door. Astute observation, boy. You'd make a fine detective one day."_

 _I already am one, Conan thought with a deadpan look._

 _"Um, excuse me," Dr. Agasa said, "I'm no expert, but if the shower door was locked, wouldn't that make this an impossible crime? It had to be either a tragic accident or a suicide, right?"_

 _"Yeah, yeah, he could've slipped on that bar of soap lying right there next to him," Sonoko pointed out._

 _"But even then," Haibara chimed in, "there's clearly a safety handle right there on the wall, right? If he was about to fall, he could've just grabbed it. He seems to have been a fairly light guy, and the grip is made of metal and literally attached to the wall, so surely it could've supported his weight and stopped his fall, were this a mere accident. He was clearly of great enough height that he could've easily grabbed onto it in a moment's notice. The mere fact that it's still intact on the wall is proof that it hasn't been tampered with."_

 _Furthermore, Conan thought, when I examined the body there was no trace of soap on either of his feet. Under the conditions of this shower, surely the floor would be wet, and the shower was indeed running whenever we discovered the body. A conventional bar of soap loses its hard, unwieldy form when exposed to water, so surely it would leave residue on the bottom of the victim's foot, were his foot to come into contact with it._

 _Besides, he thought, that's way too freakish a coincidence: that he would slip that message to the Professor asking to speak with him privately about the truth behind the mysterious calls originating from here, and then die in a freak accident roughly one hour later or less. I've witnessed a lot of crazy things in my life, but I don't believe that._

 _"Well, I guess it could've been suicide," one of the monks said._

 _"Possibly, but we haven't found a note," the headmaster said. "And if he was planning on killing himself, why did he tell our guests to meet with him in an hour?"_

 _"Hey, I just realized something," Masumi said. "To have hit his head the way that he did, he had to have been facing toward the door, or opposite to the shower. In that case, were he to try and grab the handle it would've been with his left hand, right?"_

 _"Umm, yeah, and?" the Inspector said, confused._

 _"If I remember it right, he was lefthanded," Dr. Agasa said._

 _"That begs the question," Masumi said. "There was a rag in the shower when we found the body; what hand would he have held it with? His left, no?"_

 _"Oh, oh, I know where you're going with this," Sonoko said. "That hand would've been really soapy and slippery, so if he fell, he might've easily lost his grip on the handle, and then hit his head and died."_

 _"That means this could've very well been just an accident," the Inspector said._

 _"Heeeehh?" Conan said. "But look closely, Inspector! At the handle on the wall!"_

 _The Inspector, suspecting that this child had spotted something else relevant to the case, did as he was told. "What am I looking for?"_

 _"Something that you shouldn't be able to find any of," Conan said. "Traces of soap on the handle."_

 **Scene Transition**

 _Sure enough:_

 _"Inspector, our report is in," one of the other cops said. "There were no fresh traces of soap on that safety grip. And while there were slight quantities of water, we predict that the victim did not grab it with a wet hand."_

 _The Inspector nodded. "Good work."_

 _"This doesn't make any sense!" Sonoko said. "So... he slipped and didn't grab the handle?"_

 _Masumi shrugged. "Perhaps he didn't think to do that as he was falling. It happens, at least occasionally, right? Or at least it could."_

 _I still don't buy it, Conan thought. But there doesn't seem to be any hard proof._

 _He growled. There just isn't enough information to make a-_

 _"Sup."_

 _Having arrived on the scene was Nancy._

 **Scene Transition**

 _She came, Sonoko realized, stunned._

 _"How did you even get here?" Haibara asked._

 _"That's not important," Nancy said. "Hey, Conan, I need to talk to you real fast."_

 _The two of them stepped out of the room._

 _"How'd you get here?" Conan asked._

 _"A man was nice enough to pay my ticket," she explained. "Now, um, listen. I'm not allowed to tell you how I came by this information, but: have you ever heard of something called_ Next Conan's Hint _?"_

 _"No. Should I? What is it?"_

 _"Basically it's a hint for whatever case you're trying to solve at any given time. It shows up before you've actually solved it, like there's some psychic guy who already knows the answer."_

 _Conan's jaw dropped. He didn't know where to begin. And then:_

 _"How the HECK have I not heard of this until now?! Do you realize how much time something like that could've saved me over the years?"_

 _"I know, I know. I'm just now learning about it too. For stupid arbitrary reasons we're not normally allowed in on the hint. But this one time, an exception has been made."_

 _"And what's the hint?"_

 _"Thunder."_

 _Huh? Conan thought. "Thunder? That's the hint?"_

 _"Yeah. Does it mean anything to you?"_

 _"Um...no, wait, just give me a minute to..."_

 _And then it hit him._

 _"What?" Nancy asked._

 _Conan stepped back into the room. Then he noticed it: an electrical outlet near the door to the shower._

 _He grinned. "Oi, Haibara."_

 _Haibara came running._

 _"I need the two of you to do something for me," Conan said. "There's some items I need you to find..."_

 _Sonoko looked at Nancy from across the room._

 _Oh man, she thought, when this is over I'll be owing her one heck of an apology._

 **Scene Transition**

 _"Okay then," the Inspector said, closing his notebook. "I guess we'll just put this one down as an accid-_

 _*_ BLAM _*_

 _The suddenness and loudness of that thunderclap startled everyone in the room._

 _"That's unusual," the Inspector said. "I didn't think it was even raining right n-_

 _"Whoa!" Sonoko exclaimed. "Professor, did you wet your pants just now?"_

 _"N-No!" the Professor lied. "I must've spilled tea on my pants earlier, and you're just now noticing."_

 _Like anybody's supposed to believe that, Masumi thought with a deadpan look._

 _"Actually, yes, I did wet myself, but there are more pressing issues at this moment."_

 _Great Buddha, don't surprise me like that, Dr. Agasa thought._

 _Conan had snuck behind the Professor, holding his voice-changing bowtie, set to the professor's voice._

 _"Inspector, this was no accident," Conan/Dr. Agasa said. "Let's review the facts, shall we? Sonoko-chan, Masumi-kun, you've both heard that sound before. A little less than an hour ago, in fact."_

 _"Come to think of it, you're right," Sonoko said. "When we left the Shrine grounds and went for a walk on the mountain, we did hear something like that. It wasn't nearly as loud though."_

 _"A-Actually," one of the monks said, "we heard it too. Back then. It was very loud. Hey, do you think it's possible that Yoshichika fell backwards from fear of-"_

 _"That's funny if you ask me," Conan/Dr. Agasa said. "The maximum distance at which thunder can be heard is about 10-15 miles from the source. The sound of thunder originates from the sky above, and thus can travel over a larger area. In contrast, a loud sound originating from the ground has a shorter range, since it's constantly running into obstacles as it travels. We were less than a mile from the shrine. Therefore, if the thunder sound we all heard earlier came from a natural source, it should've been almost as equally loud for us as it was for you. But in fact, the sound seemed unable to carry well over even relatively short distances. Thanks for spilling the beans, by the way. You just made my job here today a lot easier."_

 _The monk growled._

 _"The thunderclap that you all heard just now was manmade," Conan/Dr. Agasa said. "It was generated by a boombox stationed outside, directly adjacent to the shower room, cranked all the way up to maximum volume. Most likely the thunderclap was recorded during a previous storm and played back. Most likely, Yoshichika-kun had brontophobia, which is fear of thunder and lightning. As you were so gracious to blurt out, he may very well have fallen backwards and hit his head out of fear of the thunder sound having gone off so extremely close to him. Combined with the wet floor, I think it's certainly feasible. But that raises the obvious question: why didn't he grab the safety handle? Conan?"_

 _"Haaaaaaiii!" Conan said, coming out from behind the Professor's legs. "Hey, Nancy, you can come in now."_

 _Nancy walked into the room carrying two items._

 _"I found these under the headmaster's bed," Nancy said._

 _"Goodness gracious, how could those have gotten there?" the headmaster attempted pathetically._

 _Nancy plugged the small spotlight into the outlet on the wall, and then shone it onto the large magnifying glass. The end result was a laser beam._

 _"You know how on a hot day you're afraid to touch the handle on the exterior side of your car door because you know you might get zapped?" Conan/Dr. Agasa asked. "Well, there's no sunlight in here, so the culprit made do with the next best thing: artificial light. Nobody here besides the victim had wet hair, so it's clear that Yoshichika-san took his shower first tonight, and most likely did so every night. So earlier in the daytime, the culprit would shine the laser on the safety handle so to generate static electricity. That way, whenever the victim touched it, it'd really sting. So after a little while, he'd learn not to touch it, simply by instinct and reflex. Maybe his comrades would blame it on a faulty wire or something, but either way he apparently bought it. So even in that critical moment tonight whenever his life depended on it, he refrained from grabbing hold of it. Thus, he died. It was a perfect scheme. I suspect that all of the monks here were in on it, but the primary culprit behind this murder...was the headmaster!"_

 _Accordingly, Agasa pointed at the headmaster._

 _"A-ABSURD!" the headmaster said, finally breaking his cool. "You have NO proof of that! How DARE you come into this sacred place and blame a holy man of murder?!"_

 _"Ah! That's him!" Sonoko said, pointing. "He's the man who called me that last time pretending to be Ran! Now that he's shouting, I recognize his voice!"_

 _The headmaster cringed._

 _"Of course, this is not over quite yet," Conan/Dr. Agasa said. "You're still probably wondering: why. For what reason did he imitate Ran-chan's voice and call you? It's actually quite simple. In the past year, the city of Hakodate has suffered a series of highly destructive fires without precedent in the city's modern history. As you'll recall, this shrine is dedicated to Kojin, the god of the hearth and the kitchen, the one whose job it is to safeguard a city from occurrences like that. This fact has turned the city against the shrine. People are asking: 'Why are we paying to fund this shrine to a god who's done nothing for us lately?' As a result, the headmaster and his subordinate monks began to fear that this shrine's source of funding would soon be cut off. And so, they hatched a harebrained scheme: contact people of means claiming to be a dead friend, relative, or loved one, have them trace the calls back to this shrine, and then have them gratefully provide large donations to supplement your pension, or even to replace it altogether, should the need arise. All they needed was one rich person to fall for it and they'd be set for a good while."_

 _"But hold on," Sonoko said. "I come from a wealthy family, sure, but what about those other people?"_

 _"Ah, that. If you'll recall, those three people were: a prostheticist, a paralegal, and a veterinarian. In fact, all of these jobs can pay pretty good. However, it's more than that: most likely they did research on their marks, and found that they had a large sum of money saved up in their bank accounts. A person who wasn't aware of this wouldn't suspect that only rich people were getting calls. However, whenever none of these attempts succeeded, they grew impatient. They went straight after Sonoko-chan, the daughter and possible heiress to an immense fortune, an international conglomerate. To be clear, the person behind the calls had to have been the headmaster. I had a colleague of mine do some research on him, and it turns out he used to be a comedian. Many comedians are renowned as impressionists, people who can do spot-on imitations of other people's voices. Seth MacFarlane is one notable example of this in America. And the present headmaster of this shrine, as it turns out, was also well known locally for his impressions back in the day. It must've taken a lot of effort, imitating a teenage girl's voice, which is why the first three people whose identities you assumed were male. I assume you contacted one of Sonoko and Ran's classmates at Teitan High School to supply you with critical information on the two of them. That's just about the only way you could've made this work."_

 _"However," Conan/Dr. Agasa continued, "not all of the monks were on board with these scams. One of them, they knew, had too much of a conscience to be trusted with knowledge of their plans. That person was Yoshichika-kun. That's why, when impersonating Ran, the headmaster told Sonoko that he'd call her and not the other way around; they had to fit it around Yoshichika-kun's schedule. The calls could only be made when the young monk wasn't in a position to listen in. Since all three phones inside the house are part of the same landline, were Sonoko to call at an inopportune moment Yoshichika-kun might hear the ringing phone and answer it himself. That would've ruined everything. They had to keep him in the dark, but they weren't as successful at this as they'd hoped. During the last call to Sonoko, Yoshichika-kun just happened to barge in on the headmaster's quarters and catch him speaking in a teenage girl's voice. At that point, he put two and two together and realized that the headmaster was responsible for the calls that random Japanese people had been receiving supposedly from dead loved ones. When we came here, he saw his chance to right this very wrong situation by testifying against his colleagues, by telling the truth. They knew what he was up and so they killed him first. They must've been planning this murder for a long time, but they might not have ever gone through with it if not for the events of tonight."_

 _And with that, my work here is done, Conan thought, stepping out of the room to go get some fresh air outside._

 _The headmaster fell to his knees. "It's true. Don't blame any of my boys here. It was all my idea, and they only went along with it like faithful students. I was the one who got out the boombox and used it to kill a guy tonight."_

 _"I hope you think good and hard about everything you've done," Sonoko said, a tinge of anger in her voice._

 _"I-I didn't mean any harm," the headmaster said. "If anything, I thought I was doing all those people, and you, a favor. Truth be told, we have no way of knowing what happens to our dead loved ones after they're gone from this earth. I figured I could give their living family members and friends a little more time to say goodbye, and to be rest assured that they weren't in any pain. I may be a murderer, but besides that I don't regret a thing. I mean, in a way, this was as much for their good as it was mine."_

 _Nancy sighed, and then declared:_

 _"I don't buy that, not for one second._ _Who are you to make a decision like that for someone else, without even asking them what they think?"_

 _Hold on a second, Sonoko thought. This is-_

 _"Me personally, I don't believe that I could move past a broken heart if I didn't have the faintest clue of why it happened," Nancy said. "I would demand the facts, surely, no matter how terrible they may be. And I know I'm not the only person who thinks like this! So who do you think you are?"_

 _I...I've heard this conversation before, Sonoko realized._

 **Scene Transition**

 _Indeed, the scene that she now recalled had taken place many years ago, when they were both still kids. Sonoko contemplated telling a boy her age that his dead hamster had escaped. She tried to justify it as being for his own good, but as soon as she was finished with her selfish rambling Ran responded with:_

 _"...No, you can't do that."_

 _"Huh?" Sonoko said. "Why not? It...it's for Kondo-kun's own good, right?"_

 _"I don't buy that, not for one second," Ran said. "Who are you to make a decision like that for someone else, without even asking them what they think? Me personally, I don't believe that I could move past a broken heart if I didn't have the faintest clue of why it happened. I would demand the facts, surely, no matter how terrible they may be. And I know I'm not the only person who thinks like this! So who do you think you are?"_

 _That sharp reprimanding tone had been enough at the time to have Sonoko running off in tears. But later, she realized that Ran was right, and when the boy returned to Tokyo she told him the truth about what had happened to Cthulhu the hamster._

 **Scene Transition**

 _There...there's no way, Sonoko realized. On top of the mountain of coincidences connecting this girl to Ran, there's no way she should be uttering those exact same words Ran said to me all those years ago. Which means..._

 _No, it's impossible, she thought. But at the same time, this world is filled with wild and seemingly impossible things and occurrences. What if, just maybe, Ran coming back to life in a younger body is just one of those things? This will require a huge leap of faith on my part...No, there's one way to be sure._

 **Ending**

(Secret of my Heart by Mai Kuraki)

 _Donna kotoba ni kaete_

 _Kimi ni tsutaerareru darou_

 _Arekara ikutsumo no kisetsu ga_

 _Toorisugita keredo_

 _Itsumo soba de waratteru_

 _Watashi nimo ienai koto ga mada hitotsu dake aru_

 _SECRET OF MY HEART_

 _Utagattemo nai ne_

 _Itsu datte sukoshi no mirai ga areba_

 _Shinjitsu wa te ni irerareru hazu_

 _I CANNOT SAY mou sukoshi dake_

 _I'M WAITING FOR A CHANCE_

As soon as the case had been wrapped up, they took the bullet train back to Tokyo. The whole trip back, Sonoko had Nancy sit beside her, without either of them saying a word.

Conan went home, but about twenty minutes afterwards he got a strange and unexpected text from Sonoko:

 _Come to my place ASAP kid. It can't wait._

This text came as an annoyance, as he was really looking forward to exploring his online fan club that he hadn't known existed, but he nontheless got out of bed and walked out of the Mouri Residency once more.

He walked until he arrived at the Suzuki Mansion.

He rung the doorbell. A few seconds later Sonoko's mother, Tomoko Suzuki, answered the door.

"Oh, if it isn't Conan-kun," she said. "Sonoko's waiting for you in her room. Do you need directions?"

"No ma'am, I got it," Conan said.

I've only been here like ten dozen times before, he thought with a deadpan look.

 **Scene Transition**

He entered the rich girl's bedroom, just to find that she wasn't there, when-

He noticed that the glass door was slid open. Sonoko stood outside, leaning against the balcony, looking out at the moonlight.

He went out and stood next to her, looking up at her head.

"Hmm? What are you doing out here?" Conan inquired. "Didn't you call me here because you wanted to talk to me about something?"

"...It feels nice, doesn't it? This breeze."

"W-Well, I'm shorter than the railing, so I wouldn't know."

Sonoko took a deep breath, and then blurted out:

(Author's Note: Nope, I'm not going to put that monologue in there a 4th time. You know what she said, or you know where to find what she said.)

"Huh?" Conan said. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"...It doesn't ring a bell to you at all?" Sonoko asked.

"No. Should it?"

There was a pause.

"O-Oi," Conan protested, "why are you looking at me like that, Sonoko-neecha-

"You can cut the act," Sonoko said. "Man, the audacity. Bailing on all your friends like that. How long did you make Ran wait for you? I'll bet she didn't even know until a couple months ago, when you faked her death and had her shrunk."

Conan felt like there was a frog in his throat. He knew what was coming next.

"Well? Aren't you going to say anything...Shinichi?"

Conan gulped.

"Yeah, that's right, even the great Shinichi Kudo can't weasel his way out of this one," Sonoko said, an air of triumph to her voice.

"H-Hold on," Conan/Shinichi said. "What evidence do you have of that?"

Sonoko grinned evilly. "Now you sound like just about every criminal you've cornered. Alright, I'll bite. You know that random thing I just told you that you didn't get? Ran told me that, a long time ago. Earlier, I heard Nancy repeat it, word for word. On the train ride home, I asked her where she heard that. When that happened, she got all nervous and told me you told her that, after originally having heard it from Ran before her so-called death. The fact that you didn't recognize it proves she was lying, and why would she lie about that unless she knew I could recognize her as Ran from that statement? That's the icing on the cake, brat. That along with the fact that the two of you look exactly like how you did when you were kids the first time. I don't know how you did it, but don't try to convince me I'm full of it, because we're way past that point, you hear?"

"... Where's Ran?" Conan asked. "She didn't come home earlier, so I can only assume she came here with you."

"Oh, right, I completely forgot!" Sonoko said, a little embarrassed.

She went back inside, and opened the closet door.

Nancy/Ran was in there, gagged and tied up. Sonoko hurriedly untied her, and then:

And then the two best friends embraced tearily, as though they'd been reunited after a very long parting.


	6. Chapter 6

In that one moment, all masks and pretensions, psychological barriers which prevented intimacy and exchange of information, fell to the wayside.

In that moment Nancy Akechi, the little girl who very much so resembled Ran, said something that demonstrated impossible knowledge on her part. Impossible unless she was Ran.

Resorting to questionable means, Sonoko set a trap to confirm her strong suspicions. Conan fell headfirst into it, not even knowing what was going on.

And with that, it was over. Sonoko knew then that Ran had not died, but rather had been hiding in plain sight for months now. She didn't quite understand why, but that wasn't important. The important thing was, the two of them were together again. And they would be for a very long time, if Sonoko had anything to say about it.

A long time ago, they had laid Ran's body to rest beneath the earth. But as Sonoko tried to walk away from the grave, disheartened, Ran's hand tore out of the ground and grabbed Sonoko by the ankle, as though to scream at the top of her lungs:

"I AM STILL ALIVE!"

 **Scene Transition**

On that day, for whatever reason, Elena Miyano decided to take a risk: She rolled back the curtains in her office, and pushed the tinted window open.

And indeed, it was quite the risk. Had a rogue camera just happened to capture even the back of her head, much less her face, and did the Organization ever manage to get their hands on that footage, she would a dead woman, gone from this earth within 48 hours almost guaranteed.

But then again, one thing she could not deny: it felt good. She had always thought her office to be a bit stuffy. Because of fears of a gas attack on her person, her office did not actually have an AC installed.

It's always been like this, she thought. So why now? What makes today different from yesterday?

"Ma'am, there is an urgent matter," her personal secretary said, barging in.

He noticed the open window and rushed to-

"It's fine," Elena said. "Leave it open."

Her secretary hesitated for a moment but then he nodded.

"What is this urgent matter?" Elena asked.

"It's Sonoko Suzuki, ma'am."

"And what about her?"

"She knows."

 **Opening**

(Shameless by CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE)

Whoo girl you're as cool as ice

Deal me another full deck o' lies

Dontcha dare break yer poker face

Empty my heart's vault at record pace

 _Baby yeeeeeah!_

(Not all that glitters is gold! A pearly white smile can mask a heart as black as coal! The past catches up to Ran, in the best way possible! But an ominous choice looms on the horizon! Perceiving the one and only truth! With the body of a child but the mind of an adult, my name is DETECTIVE CONAN!)

And so we find ourselves at this crossroad again

Per my count, you've lied to me five times tonight

You've woven a tale that'd leave J.R.R. Tolkien speechless

A carefully constructed narrative flimsier than a house of cards

I don't know if I should let you walk away

I don't know if you're worth the trouble

But what I care enough to demand an answer to

"What did I have that you wanted for your own?"

You shameless thing, a web of deceit left in your wake

Antithetical to the driving force that binds people together

A thick veil of mist shrouds the true you that you can't let slip

In the name of all that's true, I'll deconstruct you piece by piece!

 **The Hand That Grabbed Her Ankle, Part Six! (Final Part)**

"...Okay then," Ran said. "You ready now?"

The man in Middle Eastern dress nodded reluctantly. "How do I pass on?"

Ran looked out at the audience. "Simply walk off stage, past the rows, and out the front door."

"That's it?" he asked.

"I think so, yeah," Ran said. "Whoever you're reborn as next, good luck."

After a moment's hesitation the man walked off stage, up the faux red carpet, and out the front door.

Then everything turned white, and the facade ended, indicating that the man had successfully passed on.

Ran found herself back at the airport.

"Huh?"

"Now it's your turn," a familiar voice said.

Ran turned around. Standing there was Bonnie.

"What are you doing here?" Ran asked. "Taking a break, maybe?"

Bonnie shook her head. "Nope. I'm still on the clock."

"I-I don't understand..."

"I'm here for you, Ran. I'm here to finish that assignment that got stalled."

Ran took a step back. "No way! I thought we had a deal!"

"Yes. What we agreed upon is that you'd assist us in helping people stuck in limbo until finally all your loved ones on earth died and came here, so that you could say your last goodbyes before passing on. And I'll give credit where credit's due: you've done a lot. You helped what, fifteen people?"

"Thirteen," Ran said. "What is your point?"

"My point is, you don't have to do that anymore. You're getting a lucky break. Ran: you get to go back. Back to your old life."

"...For real? You're not...you're not pulling my leg, are you?" Ran said.

"I'm not cruel enough to make a joke like that," Bonnie said. "Some people here are. Over time I've seen them grow bitter and disillusioned at how scared some people were of letting go. Mainly it's those people who've been doing this job for a very long time. Even longer than me."

"B-But how?!" Ran demanded. "Surely too much time has passed for the doctors to resuscitate me, right?"

"It's only been a few days on earth, but yeah. Normally you'd be right. But...let's just say an experimental new drug that can raise the dead to life has been developed, and they're testing it on you."

Ran was silent for a good while, but then she said:

"When do I leave?"

"As soon as you want," Bonnie said. "Like I told you before, time is really screwy here. But I'd recommend you don't wait more than, say, a week or two, from your present perspective."

Ran shook her head. "No, I'm going now, if that's okay with you."

"That's fine. Good luck, and I hope you make the most of the rest of your life."

Ran nodded gratefully. "I'll do that. Thank you for all you've done."

She went and suddenly embraced Bonnie.

"H-Hey, not so close!" Bonnie said. "I value my personal space, you know."

"Sorry, " Ran said, letting go. "Well, if you'll be so kind to give me directions, I'll gladly be on my way."

"Sure. Just board Oceanic Airlines Flight 815. The flight attendants will show you to your seat, and then the rest will happen on its own."

"Thanks. Well, this is goodbye."

Ran turned to go, but then:

She turned around. "You know, I never got to head your story."

"Huh?" Bonnie said.

"You know, the whole reason why you're volunteering here. You said that you "died without paying back your debts.' What does that mean?"

Bonnie sighed. "I'd hate for things to end on this sour note, but okay. My name is Bonnie Cartwright. I was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1951. I lived an ordinary life, much like yours, but then one night in 1968 my dad lost control of the vehicle and he, my little brother, and I all died when the car crashed into a tree at nearly 60 miles an hour. He was driving drunk, in a time when there was less public awareness about how dangerous that kind of thing is."

"When I died," she continued, "I came straight here. And there I learned about my previous life, the one I had before I became Bonnie."

"And?" Ran said, hungry for details.

"I was a Nazi," Bonnie said. "More specifically, I was a Hungarian man who joined and came to lead a volunteer Waffen-SS unit. Our job was the mass murder of people on the Eastern Front who were perceived to be interior as human beings, 'Life unsuitable for life', they called it. I had...I had so much blood on my hands. When the war ended, I was tried for war crimes in a place called Nuremburg. They hung me in the spring of 1948."

"And what you're doing here," Ran said, "this is your way of making amends for those actions?"

Bonnie nodded sadly.

"...And what about me?" Ran asked. "Did I also... ?"

"No, you weren't a participant in wartime atrocities during WWII," Bonnie said. "But everyone has done something highly regrettable at some point, and I'm sorry to say you're no exception."

Ran sighed. "That's too bad. But then again, who knows what I might've been in this life had I been born under different circumstances?"

"True. There's no telling what the average person could be driven to do if push ever came to shove. But...enough about that. I don't like talking about this."

"Agreed. Thank you for sharing your past with me."

Bonnie shrugged. "It's not like you're gonna remember any of this anyway."

"I figured as much."

"Oh, wait, I almost forgot," Bonnie said. "You live in Beika, Tokyo, right?"

"Uh, yeah?"

"Well...let's just say you're surrounded by some very interesting people. I know you're not going to remember this, but just in case you do, could you maybe do something for me?"

"Sure. Anything."

"Near where you live, there's a certain person," Bonnie said. "He is...unlike everybody else."

"What's that mean?" Ran asked.

"He was born with, well, a gift. A very special gift. A man like him is not seen in the world but once in a thousand years, if even then. These people have the power to change the very course of history. And one such person is in your midst."

"Are you talking about Shinichi?" Ran asked, blushing.

Bonnie laughed. "Goodness, no! I'm not talking about your boyfriend. His name is Nobutaro. If you ever meet him...When you meet him, tell him Bonnie said hi."

"How will I recognize him?" Ran asked.

"Believe me, you'll know him when you meet him."

They concluded their talk, said goodbye once more, and then Ran boarded the flight that took her soul back to the land of the living, back into her own mortal body which had been revived by ELXR-0666.

 **Scene Transition**

"Say _chizu_!" Sonoko said.

" _Chizu_!" Nancy/Ran said.

They stepped out of the photo booth with three freshly taken pictures of them doing random poses in silly costumes.

"Are you sure it's a good idea to take all these selfies of the two of you together?" Conan asked, annoyed at how teenage-girl-ish and careless they were acting.

The night before last, Sonoko had busted through Shinichi and Ran's child facades and basically forced them both to acknowledge their true identities. Since then, Sonoko and Ran seemed to be on a divinely sanctioned mission to make up for lost time.

" _Oi_ , if you're just gonna complain the whole time then you should've just stayed home," Sonoko said.

"Like I said, I only came to pick up my phone. The other day I dropped it off at a shop here to have the screen repaired. For emergencies I've been holding onto Haibara's phone as a stopgap measure."

"Oh, right," Sonoko said. "That girl, is she also-

"Yeah, she's like us," Conan said. "Only a little bit older than us, actually."

"Oh? We should totally have a night out then," Sonoko said.

"I don't think that would work so well," Conan said.

"Huh?"

"I think what he means is that your personality and hers would clash too much," Nancy said.

"Pfft," Sonoko said. "She's a fellow teenage girl from the same country as me, who speaks the same language, right? I think we'll get along fine."

Even that common ground is shaky, Conan thought with a deadpan look.

"Do you know what her favorite band is?" Sonoko asked.

"Um, well, it used to be Yoko Okino."

"Heeeehhh?! I would never have pegged her as that kind of person!"

"She isn't," Conan said. "She used to like it because Higo-san was a big fan. But that was a long time ago. She probably wouldn't like it today, for...reasons."

"Reasons?"

"I'm sorry, that's all we can say," Nancy said.

"...Is Higo-san connected to that mafia group?" Sonoko asked.

"That mafia group?" Conan repeated.

"You know perfectly well which one I'm talking about," Sonoko said. "The one that you said was responsible for Ran's..."

"Is this *really* the kind of thing we should be discussing in a public space?!" Conan said.

"Sorry."

"But to answer your question, yeah, he is," Conan said. "Or at least, he was. It's complicated. You know what? The whole thing's super complicated and even self-contradictory at times. Even I've lost track of it all at this stage. I usually have to draw back on this fanmade chart to...And I've lost you. Okay. Let's talk about something else."

"I never expected Shigeru to have been a party to those calls," Sonoko said, referencing one of her classmates.

"Well, you said he apologized, right?" Nancy said.

"Yeah, but only 'cause I cornered him with the truth," Sonoko said. "Geez, I didn't suspect him to be such a mischief maker. He always seemed so tame."

"Maybe it wasn't mischief," Conan said.

"What was that, brat?" Sonoko said, annoyed.

"Hmm?"

"Sorry, force of habit," she said. "What did you mean by that just now?"

"Well, all I'm saying is, maybe he did it because he wanted to see you smile again," Conan said.

Sonoko was silent.

"Heeehh?!" she said out loud. "Does that he mean has a crush on me?! Oh my, I'm so embarrassed!"

Because of course your mind would go straight there, Conan thought with a deadpan look.

 **Scene Transition**

Their visit to the local mall having been concluded, they walked back into the underground parking lot.

"How was your trip, Miss Sonoko?" Hitoshi Kamiya, the driver, asked.

"Huh? You weren't the person who took us here earlier," Sonoko said.

"Watari came down with the flu," he explained. "I came here to replace him."

"Oh, okay," Sonoko said.

"By the way, would the three of you like a drink?" he asked. "We have water and soda in the cooler."

"Water please," Sonoko said.

"I'll take a water also," Nancy said.

"Soda for me," Conan said.

Hitoshi opened the cooler. He gave Sonoko hers first, and then Conan and Nancy theirs.

Then he put the car in Drive and off they went.

 **Two Minutes Later**

"...Oh man, I don't know what the heck this is, but I have to pee REALLY bad," Sonoko said.

"Understood. I'll pull over right there."

He pulled the car into a car wash. Sonoko got out of the vehicle and made a run for the toilet inside.

"Well played," Conan said. "What'd you slip in there, a laxative?"

"How observant," Hitoshi said. "Yes, actually."

"Huh? What's going on?" Nancy asked.

"He has a message for us from Elena-san, most likely," Conan said.

"Heeeeehhh?!" Nancy exclaimed. "He's in on all this too?"

"Yeah," Conan said. "Haibara told me about it."

"Anyways, as you've probably guessed, she knows that Miss Sonoko knows now," Hitoshi said. "About the two of you, and by default about the apotoxin, and the Men in Black. And as you might've also guessed, Elena-san isn't happy."

"What does she want from us?" Nancy demanded.

"From the two of you? Nothing, save your non-interference."

"Huh?"

"Her knowing is a needless liability," Hitoshi explained. "We can make it so that she forgets all of it, but its not gonna be pretty."

"Shinichi, what is he saying?" Nancy/Ran asked.

"...You're going to kill her, aren't you?" Conan asked.

"Me? No, fortunately she hasn't asked something that horrible of me. Not yet, anyway. No, I'm just the driver today. When she returns, I'm going to drive this car to an abandoned lot, and then somebody else is going to kill her for me. I think you know him well: he's the best sniper in all of Japan."

Shuichi Akai, Conan realized.

"I'm going to roll down Miss Sonoko's window, and then that person is going to shoot her in the head from a distance. Do not worry, it will be painless. He's an expert marksman. He never misses, or so his reputation goes. As soon as she's dead, we're going to take her to a secure location, where ELXR-0666 will be administered to her. She'll be back on her feet within an hour or two. And, most importantly, when she wakes up she'll still believe the two of you to be mere children."

"But hold on," Conan said. "She won't remember the last two weeks."

"That's a situation we're willing to put up with," Hitoshi said. "Miss Ran, I am saying this for your benefit, so that you know what's coming. I know you've just recently gotten your friend back, but for the greater good you're gonna have to make a sacrifice here today. You don't have to do anything except to do nothing."

Ran clenched her fists. Her entire body felt hot. Her heart was racing, fueled by adrenaline. Her pupils even began to dilate strangely.

She considered taking it out on Hiroshi the butler who had seemingly betrayed his master's niece, but she knew there wasn't any point in that. She considered pleading for the Men in White not to do it, but again she knew that Hitoshi was just a henchman and agent of the powers that be. Furthermore, even if she could open a direct line to Elena before it was too late, experience had taught her that Elena was not a woman who let such trifles as conscience cloud her decision-making.

She turned to exit the vehicle.

"H-Hold on...!" Conan said.

Nancy stopped.

This is the last time that I'll be able to be with Sonoko on such terms as these. Do I really want to leave now?

She removed her hand from the door, and was silent.

Sonoko re-entered the car, suspecting nothing. 'Whew, that was a close one. I almost didn't make it in time. There was a line. You know, the women's bathroom always seems to be like that. I wonder why that is?"

"Oh," she continued, "and by the way, the guy up front said that since I used the bathroom here we need to take the car through the wash."

"Very well then," Hitoshi said nonchalantly.

 **Scene Transition**

He pulled the car up to the drive-through window. There was nobody inside the booth at that moment, so they had to wait for somebody.

Meanwhile, there was a car behind them. The people inside had their window pulled down, and were talking loudly. Conan, Nancy, and Sonoko could just barely make out what they were saying:

"Whoa, that's one sweet ride!" a man's voice said. "What kind of people you think are in it?"

"Dunno," a woman's voice said, "but man, look at those windows. Is it even legal for them to be that dark? They could be like drug dealers or something."

"I'm not so sure about that," the man's voice said, "but if we had that car, you know what it'd be perfect for? Making out in the back seat."

"Mmm, it's probably nice and spacey back there," the woman's voice said. "And I'm sure they got an awesome sound system we could play sexy jazz music with while we're doing it."

Ugh, get a room, you two, Sonoko thought with a deadpan look.

An employee entered the window booth. "Hello, would you like just regular wash or would you like the polishing finish with that?"

"Regular will do," Hitoshi answered.

"Okay, that'll be ¥2000."

"Would you mind if I paid by credit card?" Hitoshi asked.

"That's fine."

Hitoshi paid with the credit card and then they drove into the tunnel to begin the wash.

 **Scene Transition**

They emerged from the other side.

"That was kind of fun," Sonoko said. "Car washes always are, no?"

No one answered.

Somebody knocked on the car door. Hitoshi rolled down the window.

"Good evening sir," the man dressed in raggedy clothes said. "Please allow me to wash your windows real fast and then you can pay me according to how satisfied you are with the level of service."

"...You do realize this is a car wash, right?" Hitoshi asked. "We just came out of the tunnel. How high are you right now?"

"Pretty d**n high," the homeless man admitted, and then he began to walk away to find customers elsewhere.

But then:

"YAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

The sound was coming from inside the tunnel they'd just came from. Conan, Nancy, and Sonoko got out of the car and ran inside.

In the bed of a truck, a man was lying dead, his throat slit. A woman was right next to him, a horrified expression on her face.

 **Scene Transition**

"The victim's name was Koichiro Suminaga, age 30," Officer Takagi said. "And let's see...the woman's name was..."

"Touko Harusaki," the woman repeated. "I was his girlfriend and YoTube partner."

"Huh?" Megure said. "YoTube?"

"Yes. We're both car aficionados who had a moderately well-watched YoTube channel. At the request of our fans, we decided to shoot a video of ourselves traveling around Japan taking baths in car washes in the bed of an old pickup truck. But I never thought something like this was even possible...!"

"Can you give us your account of what happened?" Megure asked.

"Um, yes. We entered the tunnel. The conveyer belt was doing all the work, so we both got out of the truck and hopped in back. The rotating brushes from left, right, and above activated, and we were having a pretty good time. But then, Koichiro happened to get too close. One of them swiped his neck, and...!"

She started sobbing.

"Neh, _oba_ - _san_ ," Conan said, "it was my understanding that those brushes aren't sharp, right? So even if it hit him just right, it should've only left a small nick or something, right?"

"He does have a point," Megure said, suspicious.

"Inspector!" Chiba said. "You're going to want to see this!"

He led them to one of the large spinning car brushes, which was inactive now.

"Hmm? What's this?" Megure said, leaning in for a closer look.

A small but sizable shard of glass was stuck to a piece of gum, which was stuck to one of the bristles.

"Whelp, we have our culprit, looks like," Megure said. "To think a little thing like this could kill a guy...Though I guess at high speeds it's certainly plausible."

And then, out of the blue:

"Eeeeeeew! Disgusting!" Sonoko exclaimed.

"I concur," Megure said. "Conan-kun, surely you know better than to touch a dirty wad of chewing gum, especially one that's connected to the crime scene!"

"It's funny though," Conan said.

"What's funny about this, you brat?!" Touko exploded.

"This piece of gum," Conan said. "It's still warm, and sticky."

"Gum's always sticky after it's been chewed," she retorted.

"Yes, but it's also warm," Conan said. "This car was sprayed down with cold water, no? And yet this gum...it feels about 90 degrees or warmer. It's almost as if somebody's been chewing on it until just a few minutes ago, right Inspector?"

Megure then proceeded to do something uncharacteristic of a crime scene investigator: he removed his gloves and felt the gum for himself.

"He's right," Megure said.

"Here's what probably happened," Conan said. "This woman here, she slit her boyfriend's throat with the piece of glass, or perhaps some other weapon that she hid somewhere here, in the truck, or on her person. Then she removed the gum she was chewing and used it to stage this so-called accident. If you want evidence, there's two things: First, it should be clear upon closer investigation that the blood splatter of this scene doesn't match up. Second, if you examine the gum, you should be able to find dental imprints, which will probably lead back to her. Finally, her fingerprints are probably on the glass, since she apparently wasn't wearing gloves."

They turned to Touko.

"Is this true?" Megure asked.

Touko angrily clenched her fists and then suddenly calmed down with a sigh. "Yeah, I did it. I killed him. We moved in together about a year and a half ago. But then he had the both of us quit our jobs to become professional YoTubers. He said it was his dream. And it actually sounded pretty good to me too at the time, so I agreed. But... this 'dream job' of ours didn't put food on the table. He kept hoping that it'd become profitable 'soon', so he took out several loans in my name to keep us afloat, but soon never came! I'm knee-deep in debt, and it's all because of that selfish, wildly irresponsible man! And so I hatched this scheme: what if I killed him here, made it look like an accident, and then sued this car wash? I figured that would be enough to settle my accounts, so I could start over again..."

(Author's Note: Yeah, I tried to make this case really short so we could get straight to the good part.)

 **Scene Transition**

And thus ended the single shortest case of Conan's career.

"Whoa," Sonoko said. "I just realized just you must've busted so many criminals without getting any of the the credit for it. Must suck, huh?"

Conan didn't answer.

"...Why are you guys being so quiet?" Sonoko asked.'"Hey, somebody, say something."

Finally:

"What is there to say?" Nancy asked, not looking up. "In a situation like this, what could one possibly say that'd do it justice?"

"What?" Sonoko said, confused, and now a little bit unnerved. "What's going on? Is something bad about to-

"We're here," Hitoshi said.

 **Scene Transition**

The car pulled into the vacant dirt lot next to the condemned skyscraper.

"H-Hey, what is this?" Sonoko asked.

No answer.

I've had enough of this, she thought angrily.

She reached for the door handle. Hitoshi simply held down a button, and that prevented the door from unlocking.

He received a call on his phone. He answered:

"Yes?...Yeah, I'm ready. Just gimme a minute. Alright, good luck."

He hung up.

This is it, Conan thought, his heart pounding. They're about to shoot her in the head, I'll bet. I owe it to Ran, considering everything that's happened is on me. If they don't bring Sonoko back after this, in just as good condition as she's in now, I swear I'm going to see Elena burn in hell, even if I have to make a deal with those devils, the Men in Black.

Hitoshi sighed, and then he smiled serenly, closing his eyes and looking up. "Miss Sonoko. I know you've got a million questions right now. And I'm sorry to say I'm not at liberty to answer any of them. Instead, I absolutely need for you to listen, because I don't have time to repeat myself."

Sonoko took an uncertain leap of faith and nodded.

"I've loved your sister," Hitoshi blurted out suddenly. "I have for years, though I know you already knew that. I would never knowingly be complicit in something that brought harm upon her or any member of this family. And that's why...that's why I can't carry out my orders today, regardless of who's giving the orders and for what reason. On the count of three, you and I will change places. Don't get out of the car, just climb up front and I'll climb in the back. You'll come up front, and be ready to drive this car."

Sonoko understood that the situation at hand, whatever it was, trumped such concerns as "But I don't have a driver's license" or whatnot. So she simply nodded.

"One...two...THREE!"

They switched places.

Hitoshi stuck his hand under the middle seat of the back of the car and pulled out...

"A wig?" Nancy said.

Surely you don't expect to fool Akai with something like that, Conan thought.

"Alright, miss Sonoko, these are your instructions. Do exactly as I say, and don't stop or hesitate, no matter what happens to me. Alright? Something is going to happen, in about thirty seconds or-

The phone rang again. Hitoshi picked up, and:

"What's taking so long?" Akai demanded.

"Sorry," Hitoshi said. "There have been some slight difficulties. Just gimme another minute and-

"No. Open the window _now_."

We're screwed, Hitoshi thought. "Miss Sonoko, take us outta here as FAST as you can!"

Sonoko put the car into Drive and pushed down on the accelerator as hard as she could.

*PEW PEW*

Akai blew out the car bottom left wheel. It began to spin, and finally it fell on its side.

 **Scene Transition**

"Is everyone okay?" Conan asked.

Nancy and Sonoko both were, but...

"Oh my gosh!" Sonoko said, having turned around and looked at Hitoshi. "Your head!"

"I-I'll be fine... " he managed weakly.

"No, you're bleeding all over the place!" Sonoko said. "You're anything but fine! Come on, I'll help you out."

Conan and Nancy grabbed her by the arms.

"No, you can't!" Conan said. "Don't you see? You'll die if you leave the car!"

"Sonoko, listen to him!" Nancy said. "That man out there wants to kill you!"

Sonoko turned to them both, a look on her face that they'd never seen before. "You wouldn't leave him here, Ran, would you? Shinichi, would you?"

They froze, knowing they couldn't argue with what she'd just said.

Sonoko proceeded to undo Hitoshi's seatbelt. She began to pull him up, and she forced open the car door, which gravity was pushing down upen, and dragged Hitoshi up into the open air outside the car.

There she is, Akai thought from up against a window inside the building's third story, holding a sniper rifle. These are far from ideal circumstances, but either way I don't see any witnesses, so I might as well proceed with the mission.

And then, something unexpected happened:

From the other car door, the shrunken Ran Mouri emerged. She stood in front of Sonoko and Hitoshi, blocking what would otherwise be a clear shot for Akai.

Then, she must've spotted him, because she looked right at him and:

She gave him the middle finger, the bird.

Heh, I don't blame her, he thought with a smirk. I'd give me the finger too. Nonetheless, the mission must go on. If she won't move, then I'll just have to shoot her first, and then Sonoko Suzuki afterwards. We can revive them both later, no problem.

And then, his phone rang.

It was Elena.

He answered: "Hey, good timing. I trust you know what just happened."

"That's correct."

"Do you want me to just take the shot?"

"...No. Abort the mission."

"Huh?! Why? It shouldn't be a problem for me to just-

" _The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of_."

"Madam, with all due respect, now's not the time to be quoting Shakespeare."

"Pascal, you mean. I am aware of the risks of allowing Sonoko Suzuki to go on knowing the truth, and I am willing to take that risk. Stand down, go home, and pour yourself a shot of Bourbon. As for guns and bullets, you won't be taking any more shots with those things today."

"...Roger. Standing down. I only hope you know what you're doing."

"As do I," Elena said, and then she hung up.

It was over.

 **Ending**

(Secret of my Heart by Mai Kuraki)

 _Donna kotoba ni kaete_

 _Kimi ni tsutaerareru darou_

 _Arekara ikutsumo no kisetsu ga_

 _Toorisugita keredo_

 _Itsumo soba de waratteru_

 _Watashi nimo ienai koto ga mada hitotsu dake aru_

 _SECRET OF MY HEART_

 _Utagattemo nai ne_

 _Itsu datte sukoshi no mirai ga areba_

 _Shinjitsu wa te ni irerareru hazu_

 _I CANNOT SAY mou sukoshi dake_

 _I'M WAITING FOR A CHANCE_

Two weeks had now passed since Sonoko learned Nancy's true identity. At this point, it would no longer be possible to erase this knowledge from her brain.

Hitoshi made a full recovery, and though he was offered his position back by Elena he respectfully declined, stating that "My loyalties are divided in a way that makes me totally unsuitable to serve on your team." And with that, he happily went back to being Jirokichi's butler.

Before this story ends, there's one more scene remaining:

It was late at night. Nancy woke up with the overwhelming need to use the bathroom.

After she went, she returned to her room, and was about to climb back into her bed, which was right across the room from Conan's.

But then she looked out the window, at the full moon.

It was a surprisingly beautiful sight that she hadn't gotten to enjoy in a little while. The more she stared at it, the more sentimental she became.

And before she knew it, she was kneeling before her bed, her hands folded in prayer. She bowed her head and whispered:

''Whatever great being or force lies beyond the limitations of this world, I would just like to take this time to say thank you. History is the story of people struggling to lift themselves out of the mud, trying to find their way in a vast and scary world. And here I am. I have so, so much, even as there are people today who have so little. Thank you."

She opened her eyes, and was about to go back to bed, but then she paused, and then said:

"And for you who showed me the way, you who dispelled all doubt about who I am, and why I'm here in this world, thank you. Thank you for everything, Nobutaro- _sama_."

 **The End**


End file.
